Culture is

a central
component of
international
relations. It’s
time to unlock
its full potential . . .
Cultural
Diplomacy

Kirsten Bound
Rachel Briggs
John Holden
Samuel Jones
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Cultural Diplomacy

Kirsten Bound
Rachel Briggs
John Holden
Samuel Jones
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Contents

Acknowledgements 7
Glossary 9
Executive summary 11
Introduction 15
1. Culture is an essential component of international
relations 21
2. Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage 32
3. Building relations through culture 52
4. Next generation cultural diplomacy 65
5. Conclusions and recommendations 81
Appendix: Snapshots of cultural diplomacy:
China, Ethiopia , France, India,
Norway and the US 87
Notes 95
Bibliography 98
Organisations interviewed 103
Acknowledgements

We would like initially to thank the steering group for this project,
whose support, advice and expertise was invaluable throughout the
course of our work. In alphabetical order, they are: David Anderson,
Leigh Gibson, Paul Howson, John Jackson, Ruth Jarratt, Joanna
Mackle, Beth McKillop, Eimear Nic Lughadha, Oliver Urquhart
Irvine, Jonathan Williams and Frances Windsor. Thanks also to Neil
MacGregor whose initiative was instrumental in enabling the work to
begin.
Conversations with Bruce Hellman have been useful throughout.
His work on the International Strategy for the Department for
Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has also been of immense value.
Too numerous to mention, but always generous in their hospitality
and comments are those whom we interviewed and who assisted us in
China, Ethiopia, France, India, Norway and the United States.
Similarly, in the UK, several people and organisations have been more
than kind with their time, and thank you also to those who attended
the two workshops we held during the course of the research. With
regard to China, the expertise of Andrew Small was vital in setting up
our trip, and the translations of Li Ke, not to mention her knowledge
of Beijing, made our visits possible. During the research in India, and
throughout the project, particular thanks to Shelagh Wright.

Demos 7
Cultural Diplomacy

Thanks also to the Demos interns who helped support the project:
Laura Bunt, Deena Chalabi, Yannick Harstein, Anni Oskala, Tracey
Sartin and Abdus Shuman. Thanks also to Peter Harrington for his
début in seeing the pamphlet through to publication. As always, our
colleagues at Demos have been supportive and insightful in their
comments. We wish to thank Catherine Fieschi and Mark Fuller in
particular. All errors and omissions remain our own.

Kirsten Bound, Rachel Briggs,

John Holden and Samuel Jones
February 2007
Glossary

ACE Arts Council England

ALVA The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BC The British Council
BL The British Library
BM The British Museum
BRIC Brazil, Russia, India and China – the common
reference term for the world’s emerging powers
CBD Convention on Biological Diversity
CCTV China Central Television (the state broadcaster in the
People’s Republic of China)
DCLG Department for Communities and Local
Government
DCMS Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Defra Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs
DfID Department for International Development
DTI Department of Trade and Industry
EU European Union
FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office
GSIF Global Science and Innovation Forum
ICCR The Indian Council for Cultural Relations
ICOM The International Council of Museums

Demos 9
Cultural Diplomacy

IFLA The International Federation of Library Associations

IIT Bombay The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
IMA The International Music Association
IPNI The International Plant Name Index
KFC Kentucky Fried Chicken
LOCOG London Organising Committee of the Olympic
Games
The Met The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
MoMA Museum of Modern Art (New York)
MoU Memorandum of Understanding
NGA National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC)
NHM The Natural History Museum
NMDC The National Museum Directors’ Conference
ROH The Royal Opera House
RSC The Royal Shakespeare Company
UKTI United Kingdom Trade and Industry
UN The United Nations
Unesco United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization
USIA US Information Agency, which conducted
international educational and cultural exchanges,
broadcasting and information programmes (folded
into the State Department in 1999)
V&A Victoria & Albert Museum

10 Demos
Executive summary

From the reciprocal gifts of ancient rulers to modern-day Expos,

culture has been used as a way for leaders and countries to show who
they are, assert their power and build lasting relationships. But in
foreign policy, so often dominated by realpolitik thinking, culture and
cultural exchange are often regarded as being desirable, but not
essential. A common view is that, while cultural diplomacy can help
establish and support working relationships between countries, it is
strictly subordinate to the harder stuff of laws and treaties, bilateral
negotiations, multilateral structures and military capability. While
culture plays a role in diplomacy, there remains a stark contrast
between the amount of attention, money and column inches devoted
to this area, compared with more formal diplomacy.
Cultural Diplomacy argues that today, more than ever before,
culture has a vital role to play in international relations. This stems
from the wider, connective and human values that culture has: culture
is both the means by which we come to understand others, and an
aspect of life with innate worth that we enjoy and seek out. Cultural
exchange gives us the chance to appreciate points of commonality
and, where there are differences, to understand the motivations and
humanity that underlie them. As identity politics exert an increasing
influence on domestic and international exchanges, these attributes
make culture a critical forum for negotiation and a medium of
exchange in finding shared solutions. Cultural contact provides a

Demos 11
Cultural Diplomacy

forum for unofficial political relationship-building: it keeps open

negotiating channels with countries where political connections are
in jeopardy, and helps to recalibrate relationships for changing times
with emerging powers such as India and China. In the future,
alliances are just as likely to be forged along lines of cultural
understanding as they are on economic or geographic ones.
The UK has a number of historical advantages in this regard. Our
collections and performing companies are outstanding, we have
highly skilled and respected cultural professionals, we are home to
world-class artists, our culture and heritage act as magnets for
tourism and business, and our creative industries are thriving. The
UK boasts a strong tradition of international cultural exchange
through the British Council’s presence around the globe, and also via
the dense global networks of our national cultural institutions and
diaspora communities. From 2008, the eyes of the world will be on
London as it begins its Olympiad ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games.
This provides a unique and extended opportunity to showcase our
cultural standing and to elaborate an understanding of the value of
UK cultural diplomacy for a new era.
The UK cannot afford to rest on its cultural laurels. Investment in
our cultural organisations and infrastructure must be on a par with
that of the US and our European neighbours. We must create more
mechanisms for engaging cultural institutions and professionals in
the policy-making process so that we do not miss important oppor-
tunities. We must coordinate our efforts. Our research highlights
a wealth of examples of good practice, but it suggests that the UK
needs a more strategic and systematic approach to cultural
diplomacy. In particular, with China and India placing increasing
emphasis on culture in their approaches to cultural diplomacy, the
UK must revisit its own attitudes and commitments to the power of
this medium.
This report does not argue that culture should be used as a tool of
public diplomacy. The value of cultural activity comes precisely from
its independence, its freedom and the fact that it represents and
connects people, rather than necessarily governments or policy

12 Demos
 Executive summary

positions. Highlighting a variety of national approaches to cultural

diplomacy, this report exposes the universal challenge of finding an
effective balance in the relationship between culture and politics.
The UK finds itself at an important crossroads. As we wrestle with
the difficulties of relating to countries and communities in new ways,
we must abandon old assumptions about the distinction between
‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power. Many of the challenges we face, such as climate
change, terrorism and managing migration, cannot be solved by
military might or unilateral policy innovations. Cultural diplomacy
has a critical role to play. The ability to mobilise cultural diplomacy is
a precious resource in international relations, and not one that rests
only in the hands of our diplomats: we all need and have a duty to
realise its potential. In the twenty-first century, it will be the countries
that manage to make hard and soft power work together, hand-in-
hand, that will succeed in achieving their goals.
Cultural Diplomacy sets out an ambitious programme for change,
with recommendations for the UK government, the British Council
and cultural institutions, which are outlined below and at greater
length in the main body of the text. The report’s recommendations
are divided into five broad areas:

Effective governance systems: recommendations include the

formation of a broad stakeholder Cultural Diplomacy
Working Group run by the Public Diplomacy Group at
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Political leadership: recommendations are built around the
critical need to invest in maintenance of the UK’s global
cultural standing and the need to capitalise on the
expertise of cultural professionals in policy-making.

The Olympic offering: recommendations include the
creation of a group of cultural ambassadors for the
Olympic Games and making cultural diplomacy a central
theme of a cross-government public diplomacy strategy
for 2012.

Cultural literacy: we make a number of recommendations

Demos 13
Cultural Diplomacy

designed to ensure that the next generation of Britons will

be equipped with the skills of cultural literacy needed to
deal with challenges faced in a new era of global relations.
The report also suggests ways in which diaspora
communities can play a greater role in foreign policy.

New technological challenges: the report recommends that
new technologies be the basis for innovative new working
strategies rather than tacked on to old ones. Online
strategies should reflect the full range of possible
contributions to cultural diplomacy.

14 Demos
Introduction

In the long course of history, having people understand your

thought is much greater security than another submarine.
J William Fulbright

Cultural exchange has been intertwined with the pursuit of foreign

relations throughout history. From the reciprocal gifts of arts and
manufactures between the Doge of Venice and Kublai Khan, to the
Great Exhibition of 1851, to the present day, people have used culture
to display themselves, to assert their power, and to understand others.
Thomas Jefferson’s letter to James Madison, sent from Paris in 1785,
still provides a useful summary of the motivations that underpin
cultural diplomacy: ‘I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But
it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to
improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to
reconcile to them the respect of the world and procure them its
praise.’ Fast-forward 200 years and nothing has changed. As
Fulbright’s quote reminds us, cultural relations remain central to
international affairs.
We can, then, think of cultural diplomacy as one facet of
international relations, as one of the ‘soft’ aspects of living together on
the planet, rather than the ‘hard’ stuff of laws and treaties, multilateral
organisations and military capability. The former US Secretary of
State, Donald Rumsfeld, said that he did not understand the concept

Demos 15
Cultural Diplomacy

of ‘soft power’,1 but security expert Walter Laqueur, sees it differently:

‘Cultural diplomacy, in the widest sense, has increased in importance,
whereas traditional diplomacy and military power . . . are of limited
use.’2
The term ‘cultural diplomacy’ is not easily defined. When thinking
about culture, we have taken as our starting point the United Nations’
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which Article 27(1)
states that: ‘Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural
life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to share in scientific
advancement and its benefits.’ In this report, we take a broad view of
what the term culture includes, and discuss science, sport and
popular culture as well as the performing and visual arts and heritage.
In our research, we have been working primarily with partners
among the ‘memory institutions’ (the British Library, British
Museum, Natural History Museum and Victoria & Albert
Museum), the scientific/cultural institutions (Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew, and Natural History Museum), in the performing arts
with the Royal Opera House, and with the cultural agency the British
Council (BC), which undertakes cultural relations activities on behalf
of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
In addition to extensive research in the UK, we have carried out
fieldwork in China, Ethiopia, France, India, Norway and the United
States of America and undertaken detailed desk research on Iran. The
differences in national approaches are summarised in the appendix.
Our aim has been to understand how different nations approach and
carry out their cultural diplomacy in order to make recommenda-
tions about how the UK should develop its strategy, policy and
practices in this area.
One significant finding is that it is becoming more important for
us to pay attention to cultural diplomacy. We are moving from a
world where the term was primarily concerned with relations
between elites – where static and traditional cultural settings
provided the opportunity and backdrop for relaxed ambassadorial
and political contact, for example – to one where culture is also a
medium between people on a mass scale. Many-to-many cultural

16 Demos
 Introduction

exchange is now very fast moving and capable of profound effect,

both laterally and upwardly, to the extent that cultural diplomacy
now directly affects and may even direct the more traditional forms of
public diplomacy.
Cultural diplomacy has also gained in significance as the world has
moved from the bi-polarity of the Cold War to the uncertainties of
the present multi-polar world. This has had a profound impact on the
ways in which nations construct and project their national identity.
Cultural, religious and ethnic factors now play a larger part in
defining our sense of self and community. The emerging Asian
powers understand the importance of culture and are consciously
using it as a means to project themselves not just to foreign
governments, but also to global public opinion and potential partners
and allies. In doing so, they are offering different economic and
political models to compete with those of the West.
The growing importance of cultural diplomacy now, together with
the broader concept of public diplomacy, is reflected in a number of
recent developments. In the space of the last 12 months, DCMS
published its International Strategy, the Carter review of public
diplomacy led to the establishment of the Public Diplomacy Board,
and the FCO clarified its foreign policy priorities in a white paper.3
These high-level developments have been reflected at operational
level. United Kingdom Trade and Industry (UKTI), for example,
published a strategy for the performing arts, including the formation
of the Performing Arts International Development group, while Arts
Council England (ACE) recently added ‘international’ to its list of
priorities, pledging to ‘promote our artists internationally, encourage
international exchange and co-production, and do all we can to
ensure that audiences and artists in this country benefit from the best
of the arts from outside the UK’.4 These initiatives, taken as a whole,
show how cultural diplomacy is being taken ever more seriously,
although, as this report argues, we have yet to organise ourselves in a
way that meets the scale of change taking place.
Alongside this increased policy interest, there are examples of
where we are getting things right in practice, demonstrating that

Demos 17
Cultural Diplomacy

sustained investment and proper coordination work. The British

Museum’s (BM’s) Africa Programme, for example, began in 2003 as a
three-year DCMS-funded initiative with equal in-kind support from
the British Council. DCMS agreed to continue seed-corn money for
two further years, allowing the initiative to leverage major funds from
a private foundation. This successful multi-partner programme
involves a series of events, exhibitions, debates and training initiatives
in the UK and nine African countries. A total of 20 African countries
are reached when collaboration with a transnational non-
governmental organisation in West Africa is taken into account. It is
operationally effective and entirely congruent with long-term
diplomatic and development goals.5 Similarly, ‘China–UK:
Connections through Culture’ is a £1 million initiative funded by
DCMS, FCO, the British Council and Scottish Executive that ‘helps
cultural organisations in both countries build and sustain strong
relationships with each other, leading to increased exchange of
cultural product between China and the United Kingdom’.6 These are
examples of synergy, and there are others in everyday practice not
linked to high-profile programmes, such as when British Council
language and education work takes place alongside exhibitions,
education and capacity-building.
But we need to be doing more. British cultural organisations play a
vital role in cultural and foreign relations; however, much that they
do is not specifically funded, there is little coordination, and there are
few information resources on which they can draw. The UK’s cultural
standing is materially important, both economically and in terms of
international political influence, but this does not appear to be
appreciated across the whole of government. We are under-investing
in our cultural institutions, there are few formal mechanisms for
engaging these organisations and other cultural leaders in the policy-
making process, and there are many examples of missed
opportunities. Our competitors are playing a much more strategic
game, and we need to match or exceed their efforts if we are not to be
left behind.
Cultural diplomacy, which is about the quest for the tourist dollar

18 Demos
 Introduction

as well as the battle for hearts and minds, is a competitive

marketplace. The UK has lost its primacy in manufacturing, sport
and politics, but is still among world leaders in terms of culture. The
breadth of its cultural contact with the rest of the world is huge,
ranging from the big national institutions to small regional and
amateur organisations. Within this, the national institutions occupy a
special place in terms of their profile, scale, activity and mandate.
However, as this pamphlet shows, their position as global leaders is
constantly under pressure, and cannot be taken for granted. To be
effective, the UK’s cultural status – in terms of material assets and
professional capacity – must be vigilantly maintained and kept up to
date.
Culture is a major determinant of how people perceive each other
and negotiate their differences. Opportunities for global contact and
exchange are proliferating as never before, and because of those
contacts, culture itself is changing. No longer can we think of
relatively static cultures presenting themselves to each other for
understanding and appraisal. Instead, cultures are meeting, mingling
and morphing.
This presents governments and cultural organisations with a dual
challenge: on the one hand they need to maintain established
standards of scholarship, quality and continuity in the face of
proliferating content and international competition, and on the
other, to enable mass populations to develop the vital skills of cultural
literacy – where people are able to understand themselves, and others,
and the dynamic relationship between the two. In a world where
popular culture can generate instant discord, there is an ever greater
need for the formal cultural sector to continue its role of mediation
and explanation: cultural chasms are best dealt with by building
cultural bridges.
This report sets out an ambitious agenda for change with
recommendations for the British government, British Council and
the major cultural institutions that cover five broad areas: building
effective governance systems, developing political leadership, using
the Olympics as a focus for partnership working, cultural literacy, and

Demos 19
Cultural Diplomacy

responding to the challenges and opportunities posed by new

technologies.
In an increasingly interconnected world, we should no longer
think of culture as subordinate to politics. Instead we should think of
culture as providing the operating context for politics.

20 Demos
1. Culture is an essential
component of
international relations

In the autumn of 1526, a young man stepped off a boat and onto the
streets of London in search of a career. He was destined for the court
of the English king, Henry VIII, helping the image-conscious
monarch to assert his position as one of Europe’s most important and
respected rulers of the day. The man was Hans Holbein, who went on
to produce work of the ‘quality that would ensure the English king
could hold his head high among his European rivals’.7
Great artists have always been a key asset to any leader. Rubens was
both court artist and official ambassador. The films of Leni
Riefenstahl and the architecture of Albert Speer were put at the
service of the German Nazi regime in the 1930s. The Cold War relied
heavily on cultural and scientific proxy battles between East and West
in the form of the Bolshoi Ballet, Abstract Expressionism and the
space race.
Diplomats use culture in many different ways. A collection of
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century watches and clocks in the Palace
Museum in Beijing highlights some of the impacts that can be
achieved. The collection contains prestigious British clocks and
watches given to China by visiting emissaries. It is one of China’s
choicest foreign collections and is visited by cultural professionals
from the West,8 including scholars from the British Museum who
have documented and studied it in great detail. Initially, the clocks

Demos 21
Cultural Diplomacy

and watches were intended to impress Chinese dignitaries who had

shown a fascination with automata.9 But these clocks also
demonstrated British manufacturing prowess and were symbolic of
British values: its culture of innovation and precision, and its mastery
over Nature and Time. The clocks – just like paintings, films and
scientific endeavour – communicate values and speak to people in
ways that are more subtle and less intrusive than direct propaganda.
Despite the ubiquity of culture in international relations, its
importance is not well recognised. As later chapters will show, culture
delivers tangible benefits in a number of different settings, but in the
UK and elsewhere it continues to be perceived as an add-on, rather
than being part of the core business of foreign relations. As
international relations scholar Rajan Menon comments: ‘Few
Americans appreciate the degree to which knowledge about
American culture, whether acquired by participating in our
exchange programmes, attending our cultural presentations, or
simply listening to the Voice of America, contributed to the death of
communism.’10 The UK has had a commitment to international
cultural relations for many decades, perhaps best exemplified by the
fact that the British Council has been funded by the FCO since 1934.
This continuous commitment recognises that lasting relationships are
built through long-term engagements, and other countries too have
organisations with similar aims, from Germany’s Goethe Institutes to
China’s recently established Confucius Institutes. But sometimes the
short term wins. As Ed Mortimer, former Head of Communications
at the UN, told us: ‘This longer burn stuff almost has to be forced
upon us.’11

The rise of public diplomacy: from few-to-few to few-to-

many
There has been a growing recognition in recent years of the
importance of influencing foreign citizens, as well as their leaders.
Where diplomacy – ‘the art or practice of conducting international
relations, as in negotiating alliances, treaties and agreements’12 –
focuses on conversations and relationships between a small number

22 Demos
 Culture is an essential component of international relations

of elites, public diplomacy aims to reach the masses. Although public

diplomacy and cultural diplomacy are distinct phenomena, they
cannot be totally separated from one another.
There is, however, no consensus about the aims and methods of
public diplomacy. Inherent within all public diplomacy work is the
Harvard Professor of International Relations, Joseph Nye’s, idea of
soft power.13 While hard power is the ability to coerce (through
military or economic means), soft power is the means to attract and
persuade. As one British expert has put it: ‘Public diplomacy is based
on the premise that the image and reputation of a country are public
goods which can create either an enabling or disabling environment
for individual transactions.’14
Different countries develop models of public diplomacy suited to
their global outlook, capacity and pre-existing profile. These extend
from the Norwegian ‘niche’ approach that concentrates on the
delivery of a limited number of simple messages, to the arm’s length,
distributed system of the UK, and from the centralised and state-
funded French approach, to the news management or even
‘propaganda’ model of the US and China. Approaches also differ over
time as local, national, regional and global dynamics change.
The appendix summarises the main differences in national
approaches.

UK approaches to public diplomacy

In the UK, the 2006 Carter Review introduced a new definition of
public diplomacy: ‘work aiming to inform and engage individuals
and organisations overseas, in order to improve understanding of and
influence for the United Kingdom in a manner consistent with
governmental medium and long-term goals’.15 The review marked an
important shift in approaches in the UK, because it moved away from
the idea that public diplomacy aims merely to change perceptions, to
the notion that it should also seek to change behaviour, in line with
the government’s international priorities.
There are a number of principles that underpin UK approaches to
public diplomacy. In an article for Foreign Policy in 2002,16 Mark

Demos 23
Cultural Diplomacy

Leonard outlined the four purposes for public diplomacy in the

twenty-first century:

increasing familiarity – making people think about your

country and updating their image of it

increasing appreciation – creating positive perceptions of
your country and getting others to see issues from your
perspective

engaging people – encouraging people to see your country
as an attractive destination for tourism and study and
encouraging them to buy its products and subscribe to its
values

influencing people’s behaviour – getting companies to
invest, encouraging public support for your country’s
positions, and convincing politicians to turn to it as an
ally.

In order to achieve these goals, he argued that public diplomacy needs

to operate in three dimensions – and that all three must be covered
for the overall strategy to be effective. First, governments need to deal
with communication on day-to-day issues, which requires them to
align themselves with the news agenda. In particular, they must stop
distinguishing between foreign news stories and domestic ones as if
the audiences were entirely different. Second, they need to use
strategic communication to manage the overall perceptions of their
country. Strategic communication is made problematic by the fact
that different institutions are responsible for managing different
aspects such as politics, trade, tourism, investment and cultural
relations. Third, governments must develop lasting relationships with
key individuals through scholarships, exchanges, training, seminars,
conferences and access to media channels. These relationships are not
built between diplomats and people abroad, but between peers
(politicians, special advisers, business people, cultural leaders and
academics).
Cultural activity has an important contribution to make to public

24 Demos
 Culture is an essential component of international relations

diplomacy in terms of both strategic communication and relation-

ship building, but, as this report shows, it is currently undervalued by
government and poorly coordinated. Opportunities are missed: for
example, while the DCMS has pledged to ‘make Britain the world’s
creative hub’, there was no means of joining up concurrent
exhibitions in 2006 of Zaha Hadid’s architectural designs (at the
Guggenheim) and British fashion design (at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art) (the Met), on either side of New York’s Fifth Avenue.
Both exhibitions spoke for themselves, but they also provided a
potential context for further, constructive activity.
Moreover, a number of emerging trends in global relations and
communication suggest that culture could become the most
important tool for public diplomacy practitioners, making its
effective use vital. British public diplomacy will increasingly need to
have culture at its heart.

The rise of non-state actors

The assumption that public diplomacy is the sole preserve of the state
has increasingly been brought into question. It has had to adapt to the
changing technological, social and political landscape. Public
diplomacy’s trinity of activities – news management, strategic
communication and relationship building – emphasise long-term
activities designed to open up one country to another, rather than
project an image or message for immediate consumption. In an age of
political cynicism, where politicians are generally held in low esteem
by their electorates and where anti-Westernism is rife, public
diplomacy cannot be purely an exercise in messaging. As Paul de
Quincey, director of British Council Paris, commented, ‘Rather than
pushing a message out . . . you can’t tell people how good you are; you
have to show them.’17
Public diplomacy expert Jian Wang put it this way: ‘With
worldwide proliferation of media technologies and facile and
affordable information access, the credibility and efficacy of the
national government, as the primary communicator, are now often
suspect.’18 He suggests that there are three levels of public diplomacy

Demos 25
Cultural Diplomacy

activity, each of which requires the involvement of a different

configuration of actors: promoting a country’s national goals and
policies (primarily national actors); communicating a nation’s ideas
and ideals, beliefs and values (national and sub-national actors); and
building common understanding and relationships (primarily sub-
national actors).
Culture operates on all three levels. In the 1950s, US values were
communicated through the individual art of Jackson Pollock (indeed
its individuality was part of its diplomatic value), as much as through
the rhetoric of the State Department. Today the US singer Toni
Blackman is the US’s ‘Hip-Hop Ambassador’ and ice skater Michelle
Kwan has been appointed as an official ‘American Public Diplomacy
Envoy’. In the 1990s, music, art and fashion were all central to the
global presentation of ‘Cool Britannia’.
It is through culture that we find points of commonality and
difference, and the means to understand one another. Exhibitions,
performances and other cultural forms enable us to engage with
others’ heritage and living culture. Outside Washington’s National
Gallery, the Smithsonian Folklife festival provides visitors with
experiences of different cultures, exemplified by musicians from
Castro’s Cuba giving the US public a taste of the clubs and bars of
Havana. That experience offered a contrast to more hostile images of
Cuba that are common in the US media. Indeed, one of the most
important contributions that culture can make to a country’s public
diplomacy is its ability to showcase a diversity of views, perspectives
and opinions, breaking down persistent national stereotypes and
challenging the perception that a country’s political leaders and their
policies are identical with the views of their citizens. This is
particularly important when a country suffers reputational damage,
such as that currently being experienced by the US and UK following
the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The US provides a good illustration. Its response to unpopularity
has been to assume that its position would improve if foreigners
understood its policies better. This ignores the fact that many aspects
of not just American government policy but also American values are

26 Demos
 Culture is an essential component of international relations

deeply unpopular. This cannot be simplistically reduced to the idea of

a clash of civilisations; there are real misgivings about certain aspects
of the ‘American Dream’. As Wolf and Rosen have said:

Among some groups, cultures, and subcultures, American values

and institutions are already reasonably well understood yet
intensely resisted and disliked. Misunderstanding of American
values is not the principal source of anti-Americanism. The
source lies in explicit rejection of some of the salient
characteristics of American values and institutions. Women’s
rights, open and competitive markets, and equal and secret
voting rights – let alone materialism and conspicuous display –
are (in some places and for some groups) resented, rejected, and
bitterly opposed.19

Culture provides meeting points for exposition and explanation, for

dialogue and debate. In the case of the UK, these cultural spaces are
given greater significance due to the high regard in which our
national institutions are held. The reasons why UK cultural
institutions are held in such esteem are explained in chapter 3, but it
is important to recognise that their reputation is maintained only by
constant vigilance and continual renegotiation. Our national cultural
institutions are not static depositories for cultural artefacts; they are
active participants in the articulation and communication of our own
and others’ sense of identity. Museums, galleries and libraries in
particular ‘provide the means by which a nation represents its
relationship to its own history and to that of “other” cultures,
functioning as monuments to the nation, and as such they have
played a pivotal role in the formation of nation states’.20
At the same time, music and the performing arts can convey
images of creativity, vitality and vibrancy. Throughout the Cold War,
the Bolshoi and Kirov ballets presented a more approachable face of
the USSR, and, today, Brazil is known far more for its carnival than its
politics.
Aside from their de facto ‘representation’ of the UK overseas,

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Cultural Diplomacy

cultural institutions regularly promote and showcase national

interests. The Royal Academy, for instance, has collaborated with the
British Council on architectural exhibitions in China and Japan,
which relate closely to the government’s focus on creativity. Likewise,
the The Natural History Museum’s (NHM’s) Darwin Centre has
become an international showcase for UK science, both physically
and virtually, and thereby contributes to the agendas of the DCMS,
the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). International
exhibitions, known as Expos, provide particular moments for
showcasing British culture, art and science, and the 2005 Aichi Expo
in Japan provides a useful example, visited by millions of people.21
Other activities can help to seize the moment at key points for
bilateral exchange. The 1991 exhibition Visions of Japan, mounted by
the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) during the UK’s Japan Festival,
was important in opening contemporary Japan to the UK public at a
time when commercial, political and economic relations were
growing in intensity.
In the white paper Active Diplomacy for a Changing World,
published in March 2006, the FCO outlined ten strategic priorities for
the UK.22 The contribution of culture to these aims is dealt with
implicitly and explicitly throughout this report (for example the
contribution to the economy in chapter 2), but the real world impacts
of culture are not always recognised. This is in part why culture’s role
in international affairs is consistently underestimated.

The reach of culture

Culture has the ability to reach substantial numbers of people,
making it an ideal medium for public diplomacy. ‘Culture’ has a
broad definition. Both the established institutions of culture and con-
temporary art and performance exist within, and interact with, a
wider context of popular culture. Efforts on the part of cultural insti-
tutions to grow their audiences, coupled with new approaches to
display, performance, interpretation and digitisation, mean that the
distinction between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture seems increasingly

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 Culture is an essential component of international relations

outmoded. For example, in 2003 the BM’s exhibition The Treasure of

the World’s Cultures attracted 1.3 million visitors on its tour to four
Japanese cities and a further 600,000 across South Korea, before
travelling to Beijing in 2006. Each year the British Library’s (BL’s)
website generates some 24 million hits and the British Council
facilitates over 1500 cultural events in 109 countries that are not one-
off engagements, but part of long-term projects, programmes and
relationships. These are big numbers, but it is not only exhibitions
and performances that have mass appeal and effects. Education work
can reach a lot of people too: the British Library’s International
Dunhuang Project is providing learning materials to thousands of
Chinese school children. Similarly, performances have extensive
reach; they are not confined to the theatre or concert hall, but are
broadcast through the mass media of radio, television and the
internet.
Mass popular culture has a global reach. This is not a new
phenomenon – Hollywood has been providing points of common
reference for a century – but it is changing in scale, speed and effect.
Franchised television programmes, such as Who Wants to be a
Millionaire? and The Weakest Link are becoming shared cultural
forms; exported programmes like Friends, Coronation Street or Sex
and the City are windows onto life somewhere else; and pop music
mixes and mingles blues, bhangra and reggae in a riot of hybridity.
Food is another important cultural export. Recognising the
importance of its cuisine, Thailand has used restaurants overseas as a
means of promoting its culture and tourism. In 2003, the government
launched ‘Global Thai’, a plan to boost the number of Thai
restaurants around the world in a bid to drive tourism and promote
awareness of Thailand.23 The popularity of the first McDonald’s
restaurant in the former USSR in the late 1980s sent a potent message
of popular rejection of the Soviet model. Kentucky Fried Chicken
(KFC) is China’s favourite brand,24 and today, the dominance of
western brands in places like China and India is brought into acute
focus by the presence of a Starbucks in Beijing’s Forbidden City – a
presence that is now the focus of a cultural battle of its own.25

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Cultural Diplomacy

Another factor affecting mass cultural exchange and interaction is

the step change that has occurred in the use of the internet. The
emergence of YouTube,26 where every day millions of people watch
over 70 million videos, and other social websites like Bebo and
MySpace have generated a more participatory form of globalised
culture. Social software has multiplied spaces for, and forms of,
cultural communication, creating a multitude of points of
connection that do not respect borders or conventional definitions of
nations.
Popular culture offers a starting point that increases cultural
visibility and can sometimes help to open doors. That helps to explain
why Czech president Vaclav Havel – himself a writer – suggested that
Frank Zappa act as his ‘Special Ambassador to the West on Trade,
Culture and Tourism’, why Ken Livingstone took pop group Girls
Aloud with him on a recent trip to China, and why David Beckham
was so important to London’s bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. Case
study 1 of Wyclef Jean in Haiti provides a similar example.

Case study 1: Wyclef Jean

Wyclef Jean, former member of the band the Fugees and now a
solo performer, was recently made a roving ambassador for his
native Haiti. Speaking about the singer, Haiti’s president, René
Préval, described him as ‘our best asset to promote the country’s
image around the world’.27
The move is designed to counteract the conventional picture of
Haiti, a country scarred by violence and civil unrest and the poorest
country in the northern hemisphere. Wyclef, who often wears the
colours of the Haitian flag, has been constant in his support and
promotion of his homeland and has started an aid foundation that
uses ‘the potent combination of music and development to create
small-scale, manageable and replicable projects to contribute to
Haiti’s long-term progress’.28 So successful and influential has
Wyclef been, that his name has even been talked of in relation to
the Haitian presidency.

30 Demos
 Culture is an essential component of international relations

Perhaps the most intriguing example of the impact of popular culture

on public diplomacy comes from China. One of the FCO’s main
priorities for China relates to the desire for long-term political change
(as seen in the FCO priority ‘promoting sustainable development and
poverty reduction underpinned by human rights, democracy, good
governance and protection of the environment’). The format of the
UK TV show Pop Idol, a talent contest for unsigned singers, was
exported to China in 2005 under the name of Supergirls and has
become a huge success. Most significantly, it has introduced the
concept of voting to a country that has never held national elections.
The grand finale was viewed by 400 million, mostly young, Chinese
viewers who could vote via text message – although the word ‘vote’
was avoided. In 2005, eight million did so, and the winner, Li Yuchun
– the subject of many a chat-room discussion – attracted 3.5 million
messages. The success of Supergirls in China has raised some
eyebrows. It was broadcast not by national TV, but by an independent
production company from Hunan. An official statement from China
Central TV (CCTV), the national state-run broadcaster, labelled it
‘vulgar and manipulative’ and criticised the gaudiness and
impropriety of the girls’ clothing. Beijing sociologist Li Yinhe,
however, called it ‘a victory of the grass-roots over the elite culture’.29
Subsequently, Li Yuchun visited London at the mayor’s invitation,
performed outside City Hall, and drew a large crowd from the UK’s
Chinese community.
All these factors point towards two truths about the future of
public diplomacy. First, that culture has an important role to play.
And, second, that effective public diplomacy systems will be those
that can cope with this new level of complexity and all the challenges
that it throws up, from straightforward coordination, to the difficult
business of judging the difference between engaging with culture and
co-opting it for political ends. This will not be easy, but in later
chapters we set out in detail a number of practical options that could
allow the UK government to stay on the right side of that line.

Demos 31
2. Maximising the UK’s
cultural competitive
advantage

The UK is a leading player in the cultural world. The strength of our

historic collections, their global reputation, our long-term
relationships with foreign institutions, the breadth and depth of
expertise, and the creativity of the cultural sector together mean that
the UK is at the forefront of thinking and practice on culture.
However, at the start of the twenty-first century, and as new players
and technologies come to dominate, there is a significant risk of the
UK sitting on its cultural laurels and being overtaken by other
countries, such as China and India, that understand the value of
culture in public diplomacy and are committing significant resources
to it. Overall, we are not coordinating our efforts effectively, nor are
we spending enough on acquisitions to keep our collections up to
date. There are insufficient incentives for the growing international
work of our cultural institutions to be in tune with the UK’s
international priorities; there is little support for institutions hoping
to work in harder-to-reach places. There is also danger that we will
fail to realise the cultural diplomacy dividend offered by the 2012
Olympic Games and London’s Olympiad, which begins in 2008.

The UK benefits from international cultural exchange

The UK’s cultural sector produces direct and indirect economic
benefits for the UK. Some of these benefits can be quantified, but
many cannot, and this study does not attempt to calculate the overall

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 Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage

economic windfall for the UK, a figure which would be highly

approximate and the subject of intense debate and disagreement. The
figures that are available paint a convincing picture of the value of
culture to the British economy. First, culture generates income. The
UK art and antiques market commands 25 per cent of global
turnover and as long ago as 1999 amounted to £3.5 billion a year;30 in
2002 the UK exported cultural goods to the value of £8.5 billion,31
which included art production, performances, film, music and
design; there is a growing market in the sale of advice, expertise and
consultancy, ranging from conservation to sound engineering to
policy; and the UK is a world leader in education and training
relating to culture, ranging from higher education degree courses, to
summer schools, to short courses, which take place both in the UK
and overseas. Second, the UK’s scientific collections provide the
natural resources for scientific invention and medical advances.
Third, the UK earns licensing revenue for goods and services that are
not themselves classed as cultural, but which have a cultural
component or inspiration. Examples include such things as pottery
reproduced from archive designs, and furnishing fabrics inspired by
textiles from public collections.

Tourism
Culture and heritage are primary drivers of international tourism.
The UK receives 30 million overseas visitors each year, contributing
£14.7 billion to our economy.32 Museums account for seven of the top
ten visitor attractions in the UK, and while there is no breakdown of
these figures to show how this relates to international visitors, it
would be reasonable to assume that the UK’s rich cultural scene is an
important pull factor for tourists. Figure 1 sets out the visitor
numbers for various UK attractions in 2005. While London
dominates this list, where theatre is also a particular tourist
attraction, it would be wrong to assume that the tourism benefit is
not felt outside the capital. Culture plays an important role in helping
to spread the tourist pound around the entire country, from Dove
Cottage in the Lake District and Shakespeare’s Stratford, to the

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Cultural Diplomacy

Figure 1 2005 Vistor statistics

Blackpool Pleasure Beach

British Museum
National Gallery
Tate Modern
British Airways London Eye
Natural History Museum
Science Museum
Tower of London
V&A
Tate Britain
National Portrait Gallery
National Maritime Museum
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Edinburgh Castle
The Eden Project
British Library
Chester Zoo
Canterbury Cathedral
Westminster Abbey
Roman Baths, Bath

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
million

Source: Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, see

www.alva.org.uk/visitor_statistics/ (accessed 11 Feb 2007)

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 Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage

Edinburgh Festival and Tate St Ives. And the contemporary

phenomenon of ‘set-jetting’, visiting film locations, has added to this
trend: Alnwick’s international tourist trade is no longer confined to
fly-fishers and heritage devotees, but extends to Harry Potter
enthusiasts, too.33
Tourism is important not just for its economic impact, but for the
significance that it has in creating impressions about a country. The
experience of a visit – how visitors are treated, what they see, hear and
learn – will remain with them for years and be communicated to
family and friends. In aggregate, these visitor impressions represent a
powerful force in global political relations, colouring how a country’s
actions are perceived and giving it greater or lesser standing on the
world stage. In this context, it is worth noting that the fastest growing
group of overseas visitors to the UK is accounted for by the ‘rest of the
world’ (ie not Europe or North America). This group, which includes
China, India, Latin America and Russia, is growing at 18 per cent per
year, with 6.5 million visits in 2005.34
With so many overseas visitors, the impressions created by our
cultural institutions are of crucial importance. It is particularly vital
that visitors see their own cultures being cared for and respected. The
UK is home to many of the world’s greatest treasures, and when
someone travels halfway across the globe to see possibly the best
exemplars of their own culture, she or he rightly expects the highest
standards of access and interpretation and, increasingly, the
opportunity to participate in creating new meaning for the object
either by leaving comments, or otherwise adding opinion to the
responses it garners.
But while the visitor numbers are impressive, it is essential to
realise that international tourism is a competitive market, and when
UK museums and galleries are looked at in terms of international
comparators the picture looks less rosy. In 2005, out of the top-
ranking 30 exhibitions globally in terms of attendance, the UK
appears only twice – at nineteenth with Tate’s Turner Whistler Monet
exhibition, and at twenty-fifth with the Royal Academy’s show Turks.
The UK has not appeared in the top ten during the last three years.35

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Cultural Diplomacy

Again, these figures include both domestic and international visitors,

but they do give a guide to the UK’s standing. In France, the Louvre
has experienced a huge increase in visitors over the last few years,
from a total of about 6 million in 2000 to 7.5 million in 2005 and 8.3
million in 2006.36 The number of Chinese visitors to the museum
tripled in the 12 months prior to July 2006,37 while the accession of
Central and East European countries to the Europan Union (EU) has
also significantly boosted its numbers. A virtuous circle exists:
purposeful cultural diplomacy and investment encourages growth in
tourism with consequent economic and reputational benefits that
help justify further investment. The FCO should collaborate with
DCMS to monitor the number of tourists attracted by cultural
institutions as a matter of course and use them as one of the proxy
measures of the impact of the UK’s public diplomacy work.
As the UK gears up for London’s Olympic Games and the start of
the four-year Olympiad in 2008, these visitor figures should be
weighing hard on the minds of the public diplomacy team at the FCO
– of the huge number of people who will come to see the sport, most
will also want to see UK culture. The Olympics offer an exciting and
rare opportunity to showcase the UK’s cultural credentials in front of
both foreign visitors and a global television audience of billions.
Culture, and an appeal to London’s diversity, formed an important
part of the UK’s Olympic bid, and it is vital that the DCMS and the
London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games’ (LOCOG’s)
plans for the Cultural Olympiad are joined up with efforts by the
FCO’s Public Diplomacy Board. We recommend that cultural
diplomacy should be a central theme in the 2012 public diplomacy
strategy in terms of both what the UK’s cultural institutions and
smaller organisations can do in the UK, and also how their overseas
activities could feed into and complement the UK’s agenda for the
Games.

Creativity
The creative industries (as defined by the DCMS38) form a
fundamental part of the UK economy. The DCMS says that in 2004

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 Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage

the creative industries contributed 8 per cent to national gross value

added, accounting for 20 per cent of jobs in London.39 The
relationship between this sector of the economy and the more strictly
defined cultural sector is osmotic but unquantified. From the rock
star Ian Brown getting his inspiration for a pop song from an exhibit
at the NHM40 to the filming of the National Theatre’s The History
Boys, from Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)-trained actors doing
Hollywood voiceovers, to advertising being inspired by contemporary
art, there are numerous examples of crossovers. Britain’s creativity is
of great international interest: the V&A’s tour of its Vivienne
Westwood exhibition drew big crowds in Bangkok, Canberra,
Düsseldorf, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo. All of these examples have an
international dimension and an economic impact, generating export
earnings for the UK.
But cultural institutions have more subtle effects as well. The UK’s
rich collections are an unrivalled storehouse for artists and designers.
That is why the V&A, for example, is a vital resource for all design
students, and why it attracts designers from Italy, Japan and
elsewhere. Vivienne Westwood has spoken about the inspiration for
her work that she finds in the Wallace Collection.41
The importance of cultural and creative exports is not only
economic. As with tourism, there are issues of reputation and
perception. Culture is one area where the UK is still a giant in global
terms. British talent is world class in classical music, opera, pop
music, theatre, literature and film acting. From Simon Rattle to Sam
Mendes, from Razorlight to Jeremy Irons, notions of Britishness get
conveyed to the rest of the world through personalities in a myriad of
contexts. UK cultural talent can be found working all over the world;
at least two of Chicago’s cultural leaders – Tony Jones at the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago and Sir Andrew Davis, Director of the
Lyric Opera, are British. Likewise, leading figures from overseas
practise their arts in the UK. The Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta is a
principal at the Royal Ballet, for example. In the UK’s Olympic bid,
we recognised the important role of cultural ambassadors.
Government should be alive to finding more opportunities for

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Cultural Diplomacy

engaging cultural ambassadors in international relations,

particularly where they are already resident abroad.
The economic and reputational benefits that the UK derives from
culture are clear, but some of the other benefits of cultural activities
are much less visible. One example of a powerful outcome – and one
that contributed to the fulfilment of the UK’s development goals – is
a parasite eradication programme in Africa, funded by the United
Nations to the tune of US$150 million. The programme was launched
as a result of research undertaken at the NHM, and it has saved the
lives of thousands of cattle in Africa. The consequent human and
economic impact did not get captured in traditional ways of
accounting for aid, and therefore has not been recognised as part of
the UK’s contribution to development. The benefits to the Depart-
ment for International Development (DfID) from initiatives such as
this are immense, and need to be understood and taken into account.

Culture is underpinned by a rich international network

of structures, treaties, relationships and practices
The scale of activity that is undertaken by British cultural institutions
overseas, alongside the work of the British Council, is vast. The
DCMS mapping exercise of international activity, undertaken in
2006, concentrated on just 50 organisations, but showed that a great
deal is happening on the ground. In fact, cultural activity taking place
over decades has produced a network so rich that it rivals that of the
official diplomatic network of the British government.
An international outlook is integral to the workings of most
cultural institutions. The British Library calls itself ‘a world memory
organisation’, holding ‘the DNA of the world’s civilisations’; the NHM
is ‘part of the global commons’; and the V&A is ‘the world’s leading
museum of art and design’. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, typifies
the global reach and outlook of our major institutions. It works in
over a hundred countries, with thousands of partners, creating and
maintaining a wide variety of global resources including the
International Plant Name Index (IPNI, in collaboration with Harvard
University and the Centre for Plant Diversity Research, Canberra)

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 Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage

and the Millennium Seed Bank. At the Royal Opera House (ROH),
dancers and musicians come from all over the world and are
ambassadors for each country where they were born or brought up.
The international work of cultural institutions is underpinned by
systems of governance and self-governance, with one important
informal instrument being the Memorandum of Understanding
(MoU). These can exist between governments or institutions, and in
many countries, the establishment of a MoU by a domestic cultural
organisation with a foreign one will inextricably be bound up in
politics, with an expectation of government-to-government contact.
This means that, in practice, UK cultural institutions may sometimes
need the cooperation of the FCO and local diplomatic contacts in
order to establish MoUs. As highlighted by the case of the Louvre in
Iran in the next chapter, such arrangements can help to maintain
links between countries during times of political difficulty. The FCO,
in partnership with the cultural institutions, should carry out an
assessment of the countries where official government-to-
government MoUs would be beneficial, based on the UK’s current
international priorities, with the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia,
India and China) being obvious contenders.
There are a number of other systems of governance that oversee
different aspects of the work of cultural institutions. Unesco, which is
part of the UN, is one of the most important. It acts as a clearing
house, gathering and disseminating information, knowledge and best
practices through research, publications, conferences and training;
sets standards; builds capacity by helping with policy development,
national strategies, projects, feasibility studies and raising funds; and
acts as a catalyst for international cooperation. It is probably best
known for its responsibility to designate World Heritage Sites, of
which the UK currently has 27, including the Royal Botanic Gardens,
Kew. World Heritage designation is an important driver not only of
conservation, but of tourism, too.
International treaties also affect cultural institutions. In 1992, the
Earth Summit was held in Rio, where world leaders agreed on a
comprehensive strategy for sustainable development. A key element

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Cultural Diplomacy

of this was the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which was

signed and ratified by the majority of the world’s countries and
within which institutions like the Natural History Museum and the
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, play an important role in imple-
mentation and building best practice within the UK and worldwide.
There are also numerous organisations devoted to self-governance
and cooperation, from the International Council of Museums
(ICOM) to the International Federation of Library Associations
(IFLA); from the International Music Association (IMA) to the
Eurocities Culture Forum. These organisations variously encompass
academic, commercial, professional and geographic interests, and
form an important international confederacy. Many of their
individual and/or organisational members are part of several groups,
thus forming an overlapping set of relationships that promote flows
of information, expertise and cooperation, and providing an obvious
point of interface between the government and the cultural sector.

Our cultural institutions are good ambassadors for

the UK
The UK’s national cultural institutions work in the public interest.
While there is, of course, healthy competition among them and
between them and their peers overseas, their working model is
underpinned by an understanding that their purpose is to serve the
public interest. This is in turn how they earn their licence to operate,
which then reinforces their public mandate. The public service nature
of these institutions makes them effective, but unofficial, ambassa-
dors for the UK while their public appeal makes them a valuable
bridge between diplomacy, international relations and public
opinion.
Through their collections and activities our national cultural
institutions have an international responsibility and remit. As the
National Museum Directors’ Conference puts it: ‘As institutions
preserving, interpreting and presenting major cultural and national
assets from around the world, we are by definition international in
scope.’42 For example, the NHM has many international collaborative

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 Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage

research projects running each year, resulting in 500 peer-reviewed

papers, about 80 per cent of which involve an overseas element. The
V&A or Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, could not fulfil their cultural
and scientific functions without borrowing from, and lending to,
overseas collections, and organising scholarly exchanges and visits.
The BL cannot continue to fulfil its duties without continuing to
acquire significant material – both by value and content – from
overseas: in April 2006, it took the decision to give greater priority to
the acquisition of Chinese material.43 This inherent internationalism
is not confined to the UK; in New York, one of the Museum of
Modern Art’s (MoMA’s) curatorial directors told us: ‘the Museum is
international’. As a result, some cultural institutions are beginning to
internationalise their governance structures to reflect their remit,
character and operations. For example, more than half of the BM’s
trustees were born outside the UK.
The networks that have been developed by our cultural institutions
are not restricted to other cultural institutions, but extend to govern-
ment, scholarly peers and local communities. When Kew undertakes a
plant collecting exercise or the BM undertakes an archaeological dig,
their contacts will include everyone from the relevant authorising
authorities in national and regional government to local manual
workers and guides. Just as our opinions of other countries are
shaped by personal experience, how our cultural organisations go
about their business thus assumes significance in the way that the UK
is perceived abroad by everyone from foreign ministers to workers.
The effect of such contact can be even more powerful when it has an
educational purpose. When the ROH carries out workshops in
schools abroad, for example – as it has in China and South Africa – it
can bring a whole new approach based on developing the creative
potential of the individual. In countries where individual rights are
neglected or even suppressed, this can provide a vital space for
development.
The nature of their work also requires cultural institutions to be
collaborative, not just because this is in the public interest, but
because it makes their own work more effective and creative, too. For

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Cultural Diplomacy

instance, when the V&A redesigned its Islamic galleries, the National
Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington asked to borrow some of the
collections that were going to go into storage. The V&A obliged
primarily as a matter of public service, but also in the knowledge that
there would likely be opportunities in the future for the NGA to
return the favour. There are a number of projects that involve
multiple partners from different countries. The BL’s International
Dunhuang Project is a ground-breaking international collaboration
to reunify cultural objects that are scattered around the world. This
necessarily involves shared standards of curating, cataloguing,
scholarship, technical issues and so on, but it will also result in
making information and images of more than 100,000 manuscripts,
paintings, textiles and artefacts from Silk Road sites freely available on
the internet. Similarly, the NHM-led SYNTHESYS project involves 11
large collection institutions in creating a shared European
infrastructure for research in natural science. The project is
developing shared resources, common standards and funding access
for scientists from 34 countries. Kew is at the heart of the African
Plants Initiative enabling more than 50 institutions in Africa, Europe
and the US to capture and share data for research and educational
purposes.
As these examples show, cooperation is inherent to the way the
institutions operate. Much of the NHM’s international work is
collaborative and specimens collected will be shared between the
NHM, collaborators or museums in the country of origin, and
sometimes museums in third countries. This agreed practice supports
a distributed international system of collections, information and
expertise that subsequently involves extensive sharing of collections
and mobility of researchers. Furthermore, this openness is not
reserved for other cultural professionals. Anyone from anywhere can
walk into the NHM and have a specimen they have found identified.
The museum gets tens of thousands of enquiries a year, and, while
being generous with their expertise benefits the NHM itself and
benefits science, it is also a notably open and democratic approach
which is not written down or imposed on them. As one scientist from

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 Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage

the NHM put it: ‘British institutions are well respected as agenda-free,
benign and professional and have power to influence the world in a
gentle way. . . . It’s partnership, collaborative, ad hoc, grassroots, not
grand-planned, institutional.’

The UK has a duty of care

The UK’s global standing carries with it heavy responsibilities for its
collections and displays, in terms of conservation, access, scholarship
and display, responsibilities that are in some cases heightened by
the contested ownership of objects within the national collections.
The UK’s institutions are custodians of global resources, from
material culture to plant specimens. They thus have a moral (as well
as a legal) obligation to look after what they hold on behalf of source
communities and of future generations, but they also have an
obligation to make their collections as widely available as possible.
Individually and collectively they have sought to do this by
increasing physical access, touring objects widely, and by using new
technology.

Maintaining the competitive advantage

Given the UK’s world-class standing, it is surprising and worrying
that culture does not receive more attention across government and
that, as a nation, we are under-investing in our cultural infra-
structure, as shown in figure 2, which outlines per capita spending for
a number of European countries.
One of the most important areas of under-spend is on acquisi-
tions. If our cultural institutions are to maintain the inspirational role
that they have, we need to replenish and nurture them: cultural
diplomacy cannot be sustained in the face of threatened funding cuts.
Some of our institutions are unable to add contemporary work to
their collections and repertory so cannot reflect the changing make-
up of our own society, let alone maintain their position as an up-to-
date global resource. The BL’s drive to build its Chinese holdings is
too isolated a case for a country that aims to be the ‘world’s creative
hub’. The contrast with some of our international competitors is

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Cultural Diplomacy

Figure 2 Per capita spending on culture

Austria
Sweden
Switzerland
France
The Netherlands
Finland
Italy
Germany
United Kingdom
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Poland
50 100 150 200 250
Euros

Source: The Council of Europe/ERICarts, 2006

Note: Latest figures available.

stark: in Egypt, for example, France supports a cultural institute with

30 archaeological digs and its own scholarly press; the UK has
nothing approaching this level of investment.
The situation in the UK has become almost a national
embarrassment, creating headline news in late 2006. The Art Fund
published the results of a survey that compared the spending on
acquisitions by major museums in four countries (see figure 3).44
According to The Art Newspaper, ‘the Metropolitan had more than
eight times the purchasing power of the National Gallery, and a
staggering 70 times the purchasing power of the British Museum;
New York’s Museum of Modern Art had four times the purchasing

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 Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage

Figure 3 Spending on acquisitions by major museums

(2004/05)

The Met, New York

MoMA, New York
Louvre, Paris
Getty, Los Angeles
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
National Gallery, London
Tate, London
V&A, London
British Museum, London

10 20 30 40 50 60
£ millions

Source: The Art Fund, Nov 2006

power of Tate’.45 While commentators are right to point out that

figures can be skewed by major purchases of individual pieces, the
point remains. In a world in which cultural diplomacy will be ever
more central, the UK must sustain its influence and credibility by
support for acquisitions to maintain the range, quality and
contemporary relevance of our cultural assets.
But cultural diplomacy is not simply a question of funding. As the
next chapter will show, it is vital that politicians appreciate the ways
in which cultural settings offer opportunities for informal
engagement and message-sending around diplomatic objectives.
Ministerial attendance at high-profile exhibition openings and
premiere performances should be given greater priority by senior
British politicians. For example, at the opening of the Jameel Gallery
at the V&A, attended by the Prince of Wales and Middle Eastern

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Cultural Diplomacy

ambassadors, there was no high-level UK government presence, a

missed opportunity at a time when engagement with the region has
never been more important. Conversely, there are few instances of
cultural professionals (other than those related to science) having a
seat at the trade and policy table, the inclusion of the director of the
British Museum as a member of the China Task Force being a notable
exception. Government departments should look for more
opportunities to engage leading cultural professionals in the
policy-making process, through their involvement in policy teams
and commissions.
The emerging powers are fast realising the importance of their own
cultures and using them as one of their central tools of outward
projection. Our government will take care of official ties, but if the
foundations of broader cultural relationships are not in place, these
will be fragile, especially as public opinion becomes ever more
suspicious of government activity. We cannot afford to be complacent
and expect our relative position of cultural strength to take care of
itself. It is vital that the whole of government, in partnership with
others including cultural institutions, works actively and energetically
to maintain and strengthen our cultural standing.

Market forces often drive the international work of UK

cultural institutions
Much of the work that the UK’s cultural institutions do overseas is
commercially driven. For example, not only has the NHM been
touring exhibitions overseas commercially for 17 years, it has also
provided consulting services to the European Union and the national
museums of Kenya, Qatar and Dubai. The BL generates income from
its publications and image supply, and the BM has advisory contracts
in Kenya (funded by DCMS) and Qatar. These kinds of opportunities
are particularly prevalent in the Gulf States, which see cultural
tourism as a vital future component of their economies, and in
Eastern Europe, where nations want to establish their identities, to
restore their heritage, and to modernise their displays.
Touring exhibitions are a big business in their own right. The V&A

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 Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage

alone has over 20 exhibitions either on tour or in plan at any one

time, and last year 700,000 overseas visitors saw V&A touring
exhibitions in venues outside the UK. But touring and loans also
involve cultural aims, such as encouraging reciprocity between UK
and overseas institutions, and helping other countries to interpret
their own histories through the loan of objects. One example of this
happening in practice is the BM’s Hazina exhibition in Kenya, where
objects were lent to the National Museum in Nairobi, helping visitors
to relate to cultures that permeate national boundaries, and to
understand Kenya’s neighbours. Another is the BM’s loan of Assyrian
objects to China. In these and other cases the UK’s collections are
being used to help multilateral relationships, not just the UK’s own
relationships.
The Hazina example shows how strategic investment pays off.
Funded by the DCMS, one of its impacts has been to encourage
private sector funders to support a sustainable BM programme in
Africa.
While much of this work is highly worthwhile and adds value
above and beyond the bottom line for the institutions themselves, it is
surprising that there are few incentives for cultural institutions to
coordinate their international work, where possible, with the
international priorities of the UK. International cultural activity has
not attracted the kind of cross-government structural experiments
that exist in the sphere of science and education. For example, the
DTI-led Global Science and Innovation Forum (GSIF) exists in part
to generate leverage and influence, and a £25-million fund (the
UK–India Education and Research Initiative) is being set up to
promote collaboration in education and research between the UK
and India. There is scope for these types of cross-government
initiatives to be extended, and the FCO and DTI should explore
areas where similar opportunities could be opened up right across
the cultural sector.
The government should find ways to incentivise the work of our
cultural institutions in the priority countries, such as Brazil, China
and India. Currently, institutions have to follow the market: this is

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one reason why touring tends to be to the US which is relatively poor

in collections terms, but cash-rich. At a time when the UK has
prioritised engagement with the new emerging powers, such as China
and India, and has dramatically stepped up funding for science in
these countries, there has been no significant shift in funding or other
support for institutions that want to expand their work in these
countries. Major performing companies, like the Royal Ballet and the
Royal Opera, for example, require substantial financial and other
kinds of support to be able to tour and if the barriers to entry are too
high they will not be able to work there.
We suggest that this kind of work be incentivised through three
new activities. First, the government should create a one-stop-shop
assistance unit for British cultural institutions wishing to work
outside the UK. This would provide information about issues such as
travel, visas and health; it could help to link British institutions with
local partners in their destination countries; and it could provide
information about potential funding sources. Second, a modest fund
should be created to support first-time collaboration by UK
cultural institutions in priority countries. This fund would help to
build knowledge and capacity within the cultural sector about
working in harder-to-reach countries. Often cultural institutions are
not permitted to fund other institutions. The British Library recently
provided a very large number of microfilms of Iraqi material for the
Iraq National Library and Archive. This important diplomatic gesture
would have been impossible without the modest £4500 provided by
the FCO. There should be a mechanism through the one-stop-shop
unit to share the growing body of information and best practice. And
third, the British Council should be supported to further promote
collaboration between UK cultural institutions in priority
countries. We came across stories of British orchestras and other
cultural professionals meeting by chance on the streets of cities like
Beijing or Delhi, when they could have been collaborating to increase
the overall impact and reach of their work.
For their part, those cultural institutions that have not already
done so should create international strategies, whose partial

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 Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage

function would be to show how their international work

contributes towards the UK’s international priorities. The V&A and
British Library, to take just two examples, have well-developed
international policies that take account of articulated government
priorities and include monitoring frameworks. Smaller organisations,
such as touring theatre groups, often have no idea of FCO priorities,
even when they are contributing to them. That is not to say that
cultural or scholarly objectives should be driven by government’s
foreign policy agenda – that would not be in the UK’s long-term
interests and might give the impression that our institutions are
political tools. However, for those institutions wishing to access the
enhanced funding and services proposed in this report, they should
be able to show how their work aligns with government priorities.
The creation and sharing of these documents would also help to
develop a better understanding within government of what the
cultural sector has to offer.
One major unresolved issue that we came across in our research is
that of visas. Visiting cultural professionals go through the usual visa
procedures when they visit the UK and there have been instances
when visas have been refused. This can be taken very badly. One
interviewee expressed outrage that a UK institution could take the
initiative by offering to host a visit, and then the person invited – a
very high-ranking academic of seemingly unquestionable
respectability – could be refused a visa. ‘Where is the point in that?’ he
asked. The problem is that it is not unknown for high-ranking
officials to disappear or to seek asylum once they are in the UK. One
possible approach is that taken in the US, where a special category of
visa exists to facilitate academic exchange.46 This is a knotty problem,
but we cannot ignore it and hope that it will go away; as international
cultural exchange increases, the visa issue will become an even bigger
thorn in the side of the UK.
It is important that we do not shy away from these difficult
problems. There will be no easy solutions, but we must try various
alternatives that might help to ease the situation. The government
should trial, for a limited period and under close observation, a

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new scheme for visa applications for people visiting the UK to

conduct work of a cultural nature. The types of work would need to
be carefully defined, and the individuals would need to provide
references from their host cultural institutions in the UK, plus
sufficient supporting information about their planned activities. This
does not eradicate the risk of individuals abusing the system, but is a
risk worth taking.

Even capacity-building is a competitive marketplace

Cultural tourism and cultural exports are competitive marketplaces,
but so is the cultural battle for hearts and minds. Even the seemingly
generous act of capacity-building is competitive: the BM’s plan to
assist in the development of an ethnographic open-air museum in
Addis Ababa at the invitation of the Ethiopian government is
marching in parallel with French assistance in refurbishing the
National Museum, and US involvement in constructing a display on
early human remains. Capacity-building is not only about creating
good relationships. It also helps meet some of the UK’s international
obligations. For example, because of the UN Convention on
Biological Diversity, it is essential to build capacities in developing
countries in order to enable the implementation of the Convention in
areas rich in biodiversity but ill-equipped to manage it effectively.
One example of the way that capacity-building works can be seen
in the BM’s relationship with Sudan. Here, the BM does fieldwork
training, hosts Sudanese curators on a course in London, with follow-
up in the country itself. Local capacity-building also includes learning
through being involved in education work, exhibition design and
display, advertising and marketing. In many countries where museum
services are severely embattled and short of resources, all of this
provides a big boost to morale. Building cultural capacity has
beneficial knock-on effects: a better museum helps boost tourism,
enhances a country’s reputation, and plays a part in building civil
society. But it also rebounds to the benefit of the western institutions.
For example, the Metropolitan Museum in New York provides
training for Chinese museum professionals in a scheme supported by

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 Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage

the Andrew W Mellon Foundation – this is an important process

because it creates an affiliation between the next generation of global
museum leaders, thereby cementing the continuation of institutional
relationships. The BM similarly runs a summer school for curators
from all around the globe, and some places on it are supported by
DCMS.
This chapter has shown just how important an asset culture is to
the UK. In fact, culture is one area where the UK can still justifiably
claim to be world class. Our museums, galleries and performances act
as magnets for tourists and business investors alike; we are trading on
a global scale in the art market and in television and publishing; and
our cultural ambassadors are known the world over. But complacency
in the global cultural market is dangerous: the US and our European
neighbours are consistently investing more in their cultural stock. We
need to understand how countries like China and India are making
strategic use of culture in their global relationships, and, while the
DCMS’s 2006 International Strategy provides a start, there are
insufficient mechanisms for aligning the work of British cultural
institutions with the priorities of the UK government. We have set out
a number of practical recommendations that could help the UK to
begin to improve its position and performance. These include the
review of cultural indicators by the Public Diplomacy Board as a
matter of course; the establishment of financial incentives for cultural
institutions to work in tune with British international priorities; the
creation of international strategies by the institutions themselves;
greater help and support for those seeking to work overseas; more
government help to establish MoUs; and a review of the cultural
diplomacy opportunities created by the London 2012 Games and the
Olympiad which starts in 2008.
Culture matters – especially to the UK. It’s time to start making the
most of what is a special and increasingly valuable competitive edge.

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3. Building relations
through culture

The rise of new powers is challenging western hegemony and the

structure and balance of power throughout the world. The old
realities of the Cold War, with its division between rival superpowers,
is now long gone, and has been replaced with a more fluid set of
multilateral relationships and alliances. The UK and many other
‘traditional powers’ need to renegotiate their place in the world, and
will do this through changing their relationships with a handful of
key countries. Culture can play a critical role in this process, easing
relations when they are strained, re-brokering them for changed
times, and establishing fresh links in uncharted waters. However, the
benefits of culture will not be fully realised unless there is a much
stronger and coherent structure for coordinating the activities that
contribute to cultural diplomacy. There are understandable concerns
about the need to ensure that the work of cultural institutions is not
instrumentalised. However, our research shows that, unless we
enhance the strategic coordination of these activities, this risk is
outweighed by that of missed opportunities.

The relationship between culture and politics

There is a long and intimate relationship between culture and
politics. Culture can oil the cogs of the political machine in a number
of ways, but is only effective when employed sensitively: it can be used
as a forum for set piece political messaging, and as a safe space for

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 Building relations through culture

unofficial political relationship-building; it can keep doors open at

difficult times; and it can help to renegotiate relationships for
changing times.
Getting the relationship right between politics and culture can
deliver real results. Get it wrong, and relationships can be soured for a
generation. Seemingly small things can have serious repercussions:
India still smarts at George W Bush’s failure to travel to the Taj Mahal
during his 2006 visit. But a fine balance has to be struck between
culture being used instrumentally for political ends, where behaviour
can seem Machiavellian and both culture and politics suffer, and
maintaining too much distance between the two. In international
relations, the UK government adopts an arm’s length relationship
with the institutions of the cultural sector, who also maintain a
formally arm’s length, though highly cooperative, relationship with
each other. The British Council, funded by the FCO rather than the
DCMS, is also independent, though not immune to having its offices
attacked as an agent of the British government. But distance can at
times be taken too far at the expense of significant opportunities. Our
national cultural institutions have an important contribution to make
but are only peripherally part of the infrastructure of public diplomacy.
They are too far removed from government and their overseas work
does not get enough support. As a result we are missing chances to
draw on their international goodwill and their deep and rich networks.

Culture can be used as a forum for unofficial political

relationship-building
There is a long tradition of culture providing a safe and convivial
setting for building bilateral relations or making political statements.
Cultural experiences allow individuals to engage intellectually and
emotionally and can provide personal connections that can outlive or
override immediate political disagreements. For this reason, cultural
institutions are a regular stop on the diplomatic tour, one of the few
places where work and pleasure can co-exist.
In 2005, London’s Royal Academy of Arts collaborated with the
Palace Museum in Beijing on the exhibition China: The Three

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Cultural Diplomacy

Emperors, 1662–1795. The president of the Royal Academy of Arts, Sir

Nicholas Grimshaw, stressed the importance of the exhibition: ‘Never
before has the Palace Museum made loans of such generosity; nor has
it ever sent abroad so many national treasures.’47 As the world turned
its attention to the China of the computer age and the dynamism of
its economy, this exhibition reminded us of China’s dynamic past, a
past that China is at the moment keen to stress.48 The exhibition
provided a suitable setting for the visit of the president of China, Hu
Jintao, who opened it alongside the Queen in November 2005.
Six years earlier, in 1999, the Royal Ballet toured to Shanghai and
Beijing to coincide with a visit by the Secretary of State for Culture,
Media and Sport, Chris Smith. With Chinese leaders, including
President Jiang Zemin, attending the performances, the UK
ambassador to China said that he could not have dreamt of any event
that would have brought the delegation in touch with so many senior
members of the Chinese government. During anti-Nato protests in
China, press coverage on Chinese television is estimated to have
reached 600 million people.

Culture keeps doors open in difficult times

At times of political difficulty, when diplomats are not even able to sit
around the negotiating table together, culture can keep doors open
until relations improve. There is no better contemporary example
than that of our relationship with Iran, where the election of
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 has strained relations.
Iran has a long and proud cultural history, and a cultural tradition,
particularly in literature and architecture, that imbues all aspects of
life. The former president, Muhammad Khatami (who responded to
Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations thesis with his own
speech to the United Nations promoting the Dialogue among
Civilisations), was once the Iranian National Librarian. In these
circumstances, it is not surprising that Britain’s cultural institutions
are able to continue operating in Iran, thereby keeping the doors
between the two countries open. As one senior former diplomat
whose last posting was Iran told us: ‘Our cultural institutions almost

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 Building relations through culture

certainly have more access to the wheels of power than the UK’s
ambassador does at the moment.’
On the opening night of the BM’s 2005 exhibition Forgotten
Empire: The world of ancient Persia, the then British Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs, Jack Straw, was able to share a platform with the
Iranian vice president, something that would have been unthinkable
in any other forum. The Financial Times commented on the
programme of discussions that were held to coincide with the
exhibition: ‘It was salutary to see the way that a discussion that based
itself on cultural questions, indeed that sprung from the loan of a
handful of ancient jewels and semi-wrecked statues, passed seamlessly
on to much sharper political issues. The elision felt natural, organic.’49
Our cultural institutions appear to generate more trust on the part
of Iran than does the BBC. Journalists from the BBC find it
notoriously difficult to gain a visa to enter the country – the BBC’s
sole journalist in Iran is married to an Iranian – but when the
directors of the Barbican and the BM wanted to record a radio
programme in Iran, a BBC crew was granted special permission to
travel with them. Similarly, the British Council’s training for museum
staff in Tehran was allowed to go ahead – and key participants were
able to attend – in December 2005 when diplomatic relations were
very strained.
And contact with Iran is not confined to the large institutions. In
2003 Dundee Rep performed in the country, and this year the cultural
exchange organisation Visiting Arts is running workshops about
business strategies in the arts at the Fadjr international theatre festival.50
Cultural institutions play the same role in other countries. MoMA,
for instance, has continued to cooperate with Venezuelan museums
despite the tension between Washington and Venezuelan president,
Hugo Chavez. But the opportunities created through their work are
not always taken up. For example, the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, DC, has built relationships with Mexico and Guatemala
over a number of years through its work on Mayan and Olmec
exhibits. The gallery and its Mexican partner, the Museo Nacional de
Antropología, Mexico City, agreed to hold a reciprocal show, Obras

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Cultural Diplomacy

Maestras, to be shown at both galleries in 1996–97. The show in

Mexico was a huge success, attracting around 100,000 visitors a
month, and generating a lot of public interest. The collaboration was
the result of strong relations and shared interests between cultural
professionals at the two institutions, and was not driven by political
motives. But when the president of Mexico showed up at the
exhibition’s opening, an opportunity was missed because there was
no US representative to meet him.
Cultural institutions are able to operate in ways that are impossible
for diplomats at times of political difficulties. As many examples in
this report suggest, these opportunities are often missed or under-
utilised. There are numerous examples of cultural contacts enduring
through periods of strained political relations, and in the past even
being maintained in times of war. Examples include cultural
organisations hosting a visit by Madame Ne Win of Myanmar,
maintaining a scholarly research programme in North Korea,51 and
collaborating with Syria on the construction of the EU-funded
website Discover Islamic Art.52
The FCO and British Council already collaborate on planning
resource allocation to priority countries. Cultural contact is one of
the best ways of ensuring that diplomatic relationships continue
through difficult times. The British government should explore the
possibility of creating additional resources – financial and non-
financial – to facilitate greater collaboration between the British
Council, cultural institutions and organisations and their peers in
priority countries. For their part, cultural institutions should
prioritise work in these places, and wherever possible find ways to
work against market forces that would discourage their involvement.
They should also step up their work with the respective diaspora
communities in the UK through education programmes.

Culture can help to renegotiate political relationships

for changing times
The rise of the BRIC countries is shifting the global balance of power
and necessitating a renegotiation of relationships with these

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 Building relations through culture

countries. For a country like the UK, the first challenge is to overcome
outmoded relationships based on the assumption of western
hegemony, where the West leads and dictates the terms of the debate,
and the rest of the world has to fall into line. We must adapt to the
rising power of emerging economies while achieving a relationship
that is based on equality and respect.
Most of these emerging powers already understand the importance
of cultural diplomacy in their external relations and are actively
developing this aspect of their foreign policy. For India, in an era
when power is a ‘continuous strategic project’ rather than a once and
for all acquisition, culture is ever more important as a means to
maintain and expand its new-found position on the world stage.53 As
the Indian prime minister put it: ‘The Indian influence across much
of Asia has been one of culture, language, religion, ideas and values,
not of bloody conquest. We have always been respected for our
traditional export, knowledge. Does that not also make India a “global
superpower”, though not in the traditional sense? Can this not be the
power we seek in the next century?’54
India is engaged in a comprehensive programme of cultural
diplomacy. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations is setting up
offices in Washington and Paris, to complement the existing 18 offices
that are mainly in places with large Indian diaspora communities.
The country is currently the focus of a four-month festival of culture
at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. India stole the show at the
Davos World Economic Forum in January 2006 with its capture of
the ‘creative imperative’ debate and its widely publicised campaign
‘India Everywhere’. It was theme country for the Bonn Biennale,
partner country for the Hanover Trade Fair and guest of honour at
the Frankfurt Book Fair. In the UK, the British Museum is holding
the 2006/07 Voices of Bengal Programme and the Royal Academy is
staging the exhibition Chola: Sacred Bronzes of Southern India. India is
actively using culture to expand its influence around the world.
The UK has a long and chequered history with India. Our
relationship is often weighed down by heightened cultural sensitivity.
As one Indian theatre director explained: ‘Diplomacy doesn’t work,

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it’s too formal, too staged. To really understand each other, for
creative relationships, you have to get naked in front of each other –
you need trust.’ One Indian museum director described how on a
recent official visit by Prince Charles, staff were told by government
officials to avoid even using the world ‘colonial’ in any conversations.
Some commentators have suggested that the UK’s relationship
with India has waned in recent years. According to one Indian TV
producer, until fairly recently the UK commanded what he called the
‘pre-eminent cultural mind space’ in India: go to Kolkata with a
Shakespeare performance and the audience will mouth the words
along with the cast, for example. ‘Doing something in the UK,
whether it is a performance, an exhibition or whatever, has always
brought a certain kind of recognition, a stamp of approval which
opens doors in Asia and the US,’ he said. However, he believes that the
cumulative impact of UK cultural diplomacy could be much stronger
if it refocused its energies: ‘The UK stopped forcing [sic] cultural
exchange and the US came to the fore in its place.’
The story of the relationship between India and the UK highlights
the role that culture could play in rethinking and reinforcing cultural
relationships in the service of the UK’s long-term strategic interests.
There is clearly an open door between the two countries, but the
‘colonial hangover’ can sometimes stifle diplomacy. Culture on the
other hand can provide the kind of naked vulnerability that our
interviewee argued is essential in building deep ties. For example, the
Bhau Daji Lad in Mumbai, formerly known as the Victoria & Albert
Museum, has recently been rejuvenated, with the director attributing
the new success in part to the long-term expertise and support of
their partners in the eight-year project, the V&A in London. He said:
‘We’ve developed a shared culture of understanding through this
project, an ability to co-create. There are so many stereotypes about
relationships between the UK and India, but we’ve developed a new
kind of understanding based on a different world view.’
For China, the ancient and imperial past is a space in which its
image can be constructed to appeal to western values. China is only
too aware of the scepticism with which it can be viewed by other

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major powers. Sustainable development and climate change are major

bones of contention. Memories of Tiananmen Square linger and
there are sporadic reminders in the western media that pull on the
conscience of westerners seeking to cooperate with China. The
vilification of the Falun Gong movement and the public and
ritualistic shaming and imprisonment of prostitutes without trial in
Shenzhen in late 2006 were covered with headlines like ‘China
witnesses a ’70s flashback’.55 Culture is a space that China wishes to
keep separate from this image. Ancient and imperial culture, in
particular, presents foreigners – and especially those from North
America and Europe – with a framework within which they can
approach China without confronting contemporary issues. This is
particularly so for tourism, and visits from both North America and
Europe to China (and vice versa) are on the increase.
Laying emphasis on a certain part of its cultural tradition is
therefore an important feature of China’s image management. In so
doing, cultural diplomacy is used to appeal to pre-existing concepts
of culture and value and, from the Chinese point of view, exhibitions
like China: The Three Emperors seek to impart carefully managed
meaning. In 2007/08, the BM will host The First Emperor: China’s
Terracotta Army, which will include the largest ever loan of figures
from the Terracotta Army with which the First Emperor, Qin
Shihuangdi, was buried. Famous the world over, these artefacts are
the very heart of Chinese heritage, history and identity. Sending them
to London, to occupy a space alongside the defining objects of a large
number of the world’s cultures, is a very significant act.
Contemporary Chinese culture is also drawing crowds. China was
well represented at the 2006 Frieze Art Fair in London, and every year
the streets of the world’s Chinatowns are filled with people of all
cultures watching dragon dancers and celebrating Chinese New Year.
In 2008, there will be a series of major Chinese-themed and
collaborative events when the Olympic Games are passed from China
to the UK.
At a time when the UK needs to renegotiate its relations with
countries like Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa, culture

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and cultural institutions can provide a crucial bridge between

political negotiations and human connections, but there is currently
no adequate mechanism or structure to facilitate this involvement.
The FCO needs to bring cultural professionals into the heart of the
decision-making process for strategies of engagement with priority
countries to ensure that their insight and activities are properly taken
into account. At present cultural institutions coordinate among
themselves, and are members of the Public Diplomacy Stakeholders
Group currently chaired by Visit Britain, which is designed to inform
discussions at the Public Diplomacy Board. This needs to be revised
and cultural institutions and the DCMS should be represented on a
newly formed cultural diplomacy working group run by the Public
Diplomacy Group (the Secretariat of the Public Diplomacy Board),
which would provide a formal mechanism for cultural institutions to
engage with the FCO and feed into emerging thinking and policy on
public diplomacy, but without skewing the focus of the whole public
diplomacy strategy.
There is also a need to take specific steps to ensure that the UK
diplomatic machine makes the most of the cultural opportunities
that would help its work. The FCO should ensure that all diplomats
being sent to priority countries, especially the BRIC countries, are
properly schooled in the culture of their new environments.
Cultural institutions could play a role in this, formally or informally,
to allow the FCO to draw on the expertise of curators, performers and
other cultural professionals, who might also be able to facilitate
contacts on the ground. Second, the FCO should explore the
possibility of funding cultural delegations of leading cultural
figures to visit the BRIC countries to build up contacts and
influence and act as cultural ambassadors for the UK.
In China, there is a special case to go further. The 2008 Beijing
Olympic Games provide an opportunity for cultural diplomacy
between China and the UK, who are hosting the subsequent Games.
The British Embassy and British Council in Beijing are heavily
engaged in work relating to the Games and there are initial
proposals for those working on the Games in the Embassy to return

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to London afterwards to work on the public diplomacy strategy for

London’s Games. It is vital that this arrangement extends to the
cultural element, too, and it might even be useful for one of the
British cultural institutions to second a member of staff to work
with the Embassy and British Council on the Games and come back
to spread lessons and best practice to London for the start of our
Olympiad in 2008. This activity should link to and build on the
important work being carried out through the China–UK:
Connections through Culture programme,56 outlined in case study 2,
which is being jointly funded and coordinated by the DCMS, FCO,
British Council and Scottish Executive. This is one example of the
type of joined-up, funded initiative that should be used as a reference
point for all priority countries.

Case study 2: China–UK: Connections through Culture

China–UK: Connections through Culture (CtC) is a joint initiative
between the DCMS, FCO, British Council and Scottish Executive,57
which aims to enhance bilateral relations with China. It does this
through encouraging and supporting cultural interaction. CtC
provides individual cultural organisations and producers in China
and the UK with the opportunity to build relationships and
expertise essential for working with peers in China, and also
provides support and professional development opportunities to
participating organisations.
Founded on the basis of a needs analysis survey of 355 cultural
organisations from the UK, mainland China and Hong Kong, CtC
builds on the success of the British Council’s Artist Links
programme, which was run in association with ACE and provided
cultural practitioners from the UK and China with the chance to
study and work in the other country.58 Participants in this scheme
to whom we spoke in China greatly valued this experience, saying
that it provided them with a wider cultural knowledge and
exposure to a different set of professional skills that they might not
otherwise have had.

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CtC offers a broader platform for cultural interaction, and Artist

Links provided individuals with a deeper level of experience. Both
have proved valuable in nurturing cultural exchange. Developing
and giving support to models that combine the two would provide
the cultural basis that we will need for international relations in the
future.

The relationship between culture and politics is not

always benign
The reverse side of the coin of culture ‘keeping doors open’ is that
cultural institutions sometimes work in fragile political
circumstances. There are numerous examples of instances where
culture has caused problems for politics, and vice versa. In December
2006, France’s relations with Iran were unsettled when one of the
Louvre’s exhibition guides featured a map with ‘the Persian Gulf ’
relabelled as ‘the Arabian Gulf ’. Iranian cultural organisations accused
the museum of ‘geographical revisionism’, and even attempting to re-
write history in the service of their substantial Arab funders.
Equally, political and judicial decisions can cause disruptions in
cultural relations. The Field Museum in Chicago has been working to
restore a series of cuneiform tablets on behalf of the government of
Iran, and between 1948 and 2004, two-thirds of the collection was
sent back, as scheduled, to Iran. However, in July 2006, a federal court
upheld a decision to seize and sell off the rest of the collection held in
the US, in order to raise funds to compensate Americans injured in a
terrorist attack in the Middle East, based on the court’s conclusion
that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. The
case has huge implications. As Patty Gerstenblith, professor of cultural
property law, DePaul University College of Law, Chicago, says: ‘The
question now becomes, “How do you treat cultural artefacts? Are they
to be seen like any other kind of property, like land?”’59
It is vital that the relationship between culture and politics is
carefully balanced. The British model is admired by many other
countries. The UK government understands and values the inherent

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value of culture and its potential in international relations, but

maintains an arm’s length approach to avoid the political
instrumentalisation of culture. This principle is underpinned
institutionally by the existence of the British Council, which
coordinates cultural exchange overseas to avoid the involvement of
diplomatic missions. Speaking of the British Council’s sister
organisation, the World Service, Lord Carter said: ‘If the BBC World
Service were to carry a by-line stating “Working in a manner
consistent with governmental medium and long-term goals” then its
international credibility would be fatally undermined.’60 However,
while this approach is laudable in many respects, our research
suggests that the desire to maintain the independence of national
cultural institutions is too often at the expense of fruitful
collaboration, and that it is possible to strengthen relations without
being directive.
The UK model is in stark contrast to that of the French, which
could be characterised as more ‘hand-in-glove’ than ‘arm’s length’.
The former head of the French Institute in London, the cultural arm
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, summed it up: ‘la culture, c’est la
politique’ (culture is politics). With official cultural diplomacy
activities jointly funded by the Ministry for Culture and
Communication and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, there are 154
Services for Cooperation and Cultural Activities in embassies and 436
overseas cultural institutes, of which 283 are the language-focused
Alliances Françaises. In 2006, France created a new institution
‘Cultures France’ (modelled in many ways on the British Council)
with the aim of grouping disparate diplomatic activities under one
identity.
The degree to which France integrates the structures of diplomacy
with those of culture would be a step too far for the UK, whose
cultural institutions guard their independence fiercely, strongly
supported by their government. But France highlights the benefits
that can be gained when a government works more collaboratively
and strategically with culture and understands the wealth of benefits
it can generate. We cannot expect these partnerships to happen by

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chance, and they must be underpinned by strong governance

arrangements to ensure that the correct balance is always
maintained between cultural integrity and political imperatives. As
suggested above, the creation of a cultural diplomacy group within
the public diplomacy structure at the FCO would provide an
important forum for cultural institutions to have formal involvement
in strategy development and would also act as a regular point of
linkage between them and the FCO.
The implications for the British Council relate to the focus and
emphasis of their work, rather than a wholesale overhaul of their
mission. The UK’s independent model is admired the world over, and
this value should remain at the heart of British approaches to cultural
diplomacy. The British Council should be measured more on its
ability to broker and match-make, and on the richness and depth of
its networks, than on its ability to generate column inches or the
number of people attending its own events. This report has shown
that the British cultural ‘product’ is good – we have world-class artists
and performers and our institutions are respected the world over.
They should be allowed to speak for themselves, with the British
Council providing platforms and support behind the scenes,
including the one-stop-shop unit recommended in chapter 2, which
lies beyond their current remit.
One of the most important conclusions in this chapter is that the
UK needs to let go of its hang-ups about the relationship between
politics and culture. Given our starting position, there are few
immediate risks of the relationship becoming too close, although this
should be closely and regularly monitored. The really big risks come
from not acting, from missed opportunities, and from our
competitors stealing the strategic edge over us. Culture is so often
described as a ‘soft’ tool, but our analysis argues that there is nothing
fluffy or nebulous about culture and its contribution to public
diplomacy. With a strategic overview, a more coordinated approach,
targeted funding and enhanced support, the UK could use its rich
resources to meet the competition, but only if it acts now, and only if
it acts decisively and takes some risks.

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cultural diplomacy

This report has shown how and why culture should play a role in
public diplomacy as a distinct activity, broadly defined as cultural
diplomacy. It has set out a practical agenda for integrating the work of
cultural institutions into the existing structures and working practices
of public diplomacy, primarily driven through the FCO and the
British Council. The world does not stand still, though, and in the
future, the public diplomacy dividend will increasingly go to
countries that respond to the challenges and opportunities posed by
the latest phase of globalisation.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in his book The
World is Flat, calls this Globalisation 3.0.61 The rise of new
technologies, the new possibilities offered by the internet, the growth
of global communication and the proliferation of cheap international
travel are providing individual citizens with the tools to influence
politics from the comfort – and anonymity – of their own homes.
Friedman argues that the countries that will be the leaders of
tomorrow are those that have the infrastructure to connect with these
new technological platforms, equip their citizens with the tools and
capacity to cope, and have structures of governance in place to
manage the potential negative side effects.
We must not underestimate the enormity of the cumulative impact
of the changes described; they challenge the basis of current public
diplomacy policy and practices, and require wholesale systemic

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change and adaptation. This chapter sets out a number of specific

recommendations that could help the government, British Council
and UK cultural institutions to respond to these changes, but
ultimately a piecemeal approach will not suffice. We need to change
institutional mindsets, embrace new partnership models of working,
and ensure that new technologies drive the work of these institutions,
rather than be treated as added extras to their current activities.
Tinkering around the edges will not be enough, and it will require the
investment of energy and time, as well as money.

The rise of new technologies and the internet

The forces of globalisation used to be the preserve of countries and
corporations, but now, globalisation has reached the level of the
individual. Friedman’s concept of Globalisation 3.0 describes a new
era in the globalisation process that began at the start of the new
millennium. While the first period was characterised by the
globalisation of countries, and the second by that of companies, the
defining characteristic of this new era is the ability of individuals to
reap the benefits of globalisation and connect with other people on a
truly global level. Thanks to computers, email, fibre-optic networks,
teleconferencing and dynamic new software it is possible for
individuals to collaborate and compete in real time with more people
from more corners of the planet on more kinds of work and on a
more equal footing than ever before.
Friedman argues:

This platform now operates without regard to geography,

distance, time, and, in the near future, even language. . . .
Wealth and power will increasingly accrue to those countries,
companies, individuals, universities, and groups who get three
basic things right: the infrastructure to connect with this flat-
world platform, the education to get more of their people
innovating on, working off, and tapping into this platform, and,
finally, the governance to get the best out of this platform and
cushion its worst side effects.62

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While the two previous periods of globalisation were western-led, the

new era will see the rise of non-western countries, especially places
like China and India, but also parts of the developing world where
mobile phone technology is increasing internet connectivity. These
possibilities are particularly interesting for a country like China,
where there have been few channels for individual expression. As case
study 3 shows, ordinary Chinese people are beginning to use the
internet to communicate, express themselves and organise in ways
that were previously impossible. While connectivity is currently
limited to urban areas in countries such as China and India, there is
no room for complacency about our own capacities. As Friedman’s
quote above reminds us, governments, institutions and individuals
must respond quickly to the challenges and opportunities of the new
phase of globalisation. Soon, the relative advantage of the West –
especially English-speaking countries – could be lost due to the scale
of the challenge from the emerging powers.

Case study 3: Underground filmmaking in Beijing

In Beijing we met an underground filmmaker, who by day works for
the state-run channel, CCTV, and by night makes his own
‘unofficial’, privately funded movies for underground circulation.
Just a few years ago, his night-time work would have been strictly a
small-scale hobby, accessible to only a narrow range of people. But
with the help of the internet, the falling price of digital equipment
and a persistent ignorance on the part of the Chinese government
of the real potential of the internet as a medium for such work, he
is able to reach a much bigger audience.
He also runs a website which gives help and advice to aspiring
filmmakers. On the site they can get tips on perfecting a range of
filmmaking techniques, the latest news about equipment, and
other information that will help them to perfect their art form.
Their filmmaking tends to focus on the lives of ordinary people. In
a country like China, whose government takes a very keen interest
in the way that China is portrayed to the outside world, this is

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potentially destabilising. As we were leaving the studio, two of the

filmmaker’s colleagues were editing a film which depicted life in a
small town about an hour to the north of Beijing. As he told us:‘The
government is afraid that our films might reveal a dark aspect of
Chinese society, such as poverty or corruption, which might give
rise to public riots.’ Another Chinese independent filmmaker made
a similar point:‘The internet is God’s gift to the Chinese people.’

The British Council already invests heavily in IT-based services to

support and extend the reach of its projects, for example its
permanent collection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art is
online; Crossing Borders provides IT-based mentoring for young
African writers; and video-conferencing facilities are available in
many BC offices, allowing them to run Café Scientifique-type events.
Technology is changing fast, though, in particular the introduction of
social software which is causing a groundshift in culture and cultural
engagement. The British Council should therefore invest in training
programmes for all staff in the latest technological trends, such as
wikis, social software and podcasts, to ensure that these tools are
always driving their work rather than treated as add-ons to more
traditional tools, such as events, publications and exchanges.
The rise of social software and social networking tools means that
people are connecting, organising and collaborating in new ways. We
recommend that the British Council develops its own social
software platforms within the countries in which it operates to help
it coordinate the growing numbers of cultural players on the
ground. This would allow any cultural institution visiting the
country or city to log on to the site to post details about their
activities without the need for mediation by British Council staff.
Through web facilities such as this, the British Council would
instantly position itself at the centre of cultural life in the countries in
which it operates and provide an additional useful service for their
partners and those interested in engaging with UK culture.

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Implications for cultural institutions

The internet has become a basic and important tool for all the UK’s
major cultural institutions; no major concert hall, theatre, gallery or
any other institution could survive without a website, an online
booking service and an email update. Many are developing their
websites to act as virtual versions of their physical work. From photo-
graphing and describing paintings and objects on searchable databases,
to digitising content, they are investing more time and money in
creating vast stores of online content. Sometimes this is done in inno-
vative ways, such as the British Library’s ‘Turning the Page’ project
where viewers can see images of fragile and valuable books and turn
their pages by touching a screen, as well as finding out related informa-
tion. Sometimes it takes a simpler form, such as straightforward online
catalogues. Funding for these initiatives has come from a variety of
sources, which transcend borders and boundaries. Microsoft is
funding the British Library’s digitisation of nineteenth-century
novels, and the digitisation work of Kew’s African Plants Initiative is
funded entirely by US foundations. In 2006, the British Museum gave
a Chinese professor a residency, during which he helped to catalogue
and digitise the BM’s collections of Chinese paintings as part of a
wider programme of skills sharing in both directions.
At a time when culture has assumed a new relevance to
international relations, and given the fact that access is such an
important driver for cultural institutions, it is vital that these
developments continue at a brisk pace. It would also be desirable for
them, wherever possible, to reflect the UK’s international priorities.
Towards these ends, the government should explore options for
supporting the development of the online aspect of the work of
cultural institutions. This might not necessarily mean more funding,
but the sharing of expertise and best practice. Where funding is
allocated, preference should be given to initiatives that focus on
current priorities, such as projects that would enhance relations with
the Middle East or with diasporas, or that would contribute towards
the reduction in climate change.

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On a more fundamental level, the internet is also changing the

nature of culture and the nature of the culture that we consume, and
far from replacing actual experience, virtual engagement has proved a
stimulus to physical participation. Visitors to London’s Science
Museum can engage with its exhibit Who am I? not just within the
walls of its South Kensington home, but also from wherever they can
access a computer. Theatres, like the National Theatre, provide
podcasts that offer expert commentary and behind-the-scenes
glimpses.63
People now expect not just to be able to access culture virtually, but
also want the opportunity to add their own opinion. This represents
more than personalisation of choice: it means that individuals can
shape and share the meaning of culture. In New York, prior to their
visit, museum-goers to the Museum of Modern Art can not only
download podcasts that provide information about the works in the
collection, but also contribute their own thoughts by uploading their
own comment pieces. In the UK, museums like the V&A and Tate
have offered similar opportunities. The Guardian has opened
curation to the public through the project ‘Your Gallery’. Its success
‘proves once again that people do not want to abandon the physical
work of art, only to find new ways to communicate it’.64 On the
website of Cleveland Museum in the US, curators have opened the
categories by which their collections can be searched to public
opinion. Now, paintings can be searched for by both orthodox terms,
like ‘Impressionist’ and ‘Woman’, but also terms that users can
determine according to their own interests, building collections
which they can then share with other users. Cultural institutions
should continue to develop these kinds of online services for their
visitors.
Technology is also being used to engage new audiences through
projects such as Plant Cultures.65 Taking the communities of South
Asia (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), the site uses oral history, fine
arts and demonstrations of arts and crafts to bring to life the ways in
which plants are used in different communities. The lead project
partner is the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which is working

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alongside regional partners: the Museum of London, Leicester City

Museums and National Museums Liverpool. All these organisations
work with local community groups to create web-based content that
reflects the diverse ways in which South Asian families use plants in
their everyday lives. As the next section on diaspora communities will
show, these kinds of initiatives are important for bridging between
communities, and providing important links between ‘home’ and
‘abroad’.

Immigration and diaspora communities

Given the high level of immigration to the UK over the past 30 years,
diaspora communities have become an important and constant
feature of life in Britain; there are citizens of almost every country
living and working in the UK. The relationships between these
communities and their countries of origin have strengthened over
this period as a result of the growth of affordable international travel
and instant global communication. Today, something said in Leicester
will reach Bangladesh quicker than you could fly there, and vice versa.
As one curator from the BM observed, ‘What happens in Mumbai
feeds back, electronically and physically, immediately into UK
communities.’ ‘Home and abroad’ has ceased to be a meaningful
distinction.
While the importance of these links has been acknowledged
rhetorically, it is often difficult to embody them in practical policy
suggestions or changed ways of working. This is partly because the
FCO’s mandate is broadly speaking outside the UK, and there are
always dilemmas for civil servants about when to extend overseas
work at home without stepping on the toes of other domestic
government departments. In recent years, the FCO has increased the
number of staff responsible for liaising with diaspora communities in
the UK, which is a welcome development. But there is still a tendency
for this work to be regarded as ‘outreach’ or communication, rather
than two-way engagement. One civil servant from the FCO
commented: ‘There are very real misperceptions of our policy that we
need to correct. That has to be our first priority.’

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There is also nervousness about getting input on policy from

minority or diaspora communities for fear that this is seen as
preferential treatment or access. A recent Demos report66 argued for
the need to open up the foreign policy-making process to all com-
munities, but especially those who feel alienated by the government’s
current foreign policy in certain parts of the world, notably the
Middle East and wider Islamic world. We echo this proposal, and
suggest that the FCO and DCMS should work in partnership with
the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)
to create a comprehensive strategy for engagement with minority
and diaspora communities through culture. As Friedman’s
Globalisation 3.0 takes hold, it is vital that the UK realises the full
potential offered by its rich network of diaspora communities, which
could play key roles as the UK’s ‘everyday ambassadors’.
Cultural institutions have understood the potential of working
with communities in the UK, to connect them better to their work
and to bring additional insight to their exhibitions and work schemes.
Case study 4 from the V&A provides an excellent example of the ways
in which such projects can build strong and trusted relationships and
reinforce the importance of these diasporas to UK culture and
identity. Similarly, the BM’s 2006 Voices of Bengal programme
involved South Asian communities in the UK in a substantive and an
advisory capacity, and the V&A and the British Library regularly hold
special events for specific communities and involve them in the
production of their work. Some of this activity generates coverage
overseas as well as in the UK, which can help to highlight the UK’s
openness to other cultures and people. For example, the BM’s
exhibition Forgotten Empire was covered widely in the Iranian press.

Case study 4: V&A’s Shamiana project

In the V&A’s Shamiana project, South Asian women of all ages had
the opportunity to work together to create original textile panels
in styles inspired by the collections of the V&A and other museums.
Some of this work was strongly rooted in traditional South Asian

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textile traditions and skills, while other pieces revealed the

interaction of contemporary British and Asian cultures and art
forms. The project sparked the formation of women’s groups to
create panels throughout Britain, which then extended to other
countries, including Ireland, the Middle East, South Africa and the
US.
The project’s exhibition at the V&A in 1997 brought nearly 100 of
these works together, and then toured to other countries. Some of
the panels created by community groups were acquired on merit
by the Asian Department for the permanent collections, and a
book was published to document the project.67
The project demonstrates how the work of cultural institutions
can build links with diaspora communities, facilitate contact
between these communities and those overseas, and convey an
important message about the centrality of them and their culture
to the UK, thus reaffirming their identity.

This work is essential for the UK if it is to tap into diaspora

communities as a powerful asset. But while collaborations such as
those shown in case study 4 can be hugely rewarding and offer all
sorts of benefits beyond the cultural, such as community relations,
goodwill and effective youth engagement, cultural institutions often
struggle through a lack of resources. Other countries are wise to the
opportunities afforded by their diaspora communities. For example,
India even has a government ministry dedicated to its international
diaspora – the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs.
As acknowledged above, one of the stumbling blocks is the
continuing – but false – division between home and abroad. In
funding terms, this can tend to separate work that delivers benefit in
the UK from that overseas, which means that work streams tend to
become siloed. Although there are examples of cultural institutions
working together in this area, there are currently few incentives,
besides those offered by the market. In order to begin to break down
these barriers we suggest that, as part of the DCMS’s new

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International Strategy, it builds the capacity to act as a liaision

point between cultural institutions and diaspora communities in
the UK, with the priority placed on those communities that are
important in foreign policy terms. In fulfilling this function, the
DCMS would need to liaise closely with the FCO and ensure that any
activities in the UK are properly linked to and referenced against work
carried out by diplomatic missions and British Council offices overseas.
As well as facilitating relationships and activities for individual
institutions and small groups working together, there is also scope
for the DCMS to coordinate more public and participatory events
that would have the added benefit of highlighting the contribution
of diaspora communities to the British public as a whole. One
model that might be useful in this regard is that of France’s Saisons
Culturels, the organisation and purpose of which are explained in
case study 5.

Case study 5: Saisons Culturels

France’s Saisons Culturels are explicitly political, and highly
coordinated. One country is invited each year by the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture and Communication to
be the focus of a series of exhibitions and events (dance, theatre,
cinema, music, art) focusing on its culture. The intention is to create
long-lasting relationships.
The size of the programmes and events varies depending on the
country – China (2000/01), for example, was a major undertaking,
and included ‘France in China’ exhibitions in China, as well as ‘China
in France’ exhibitions in France. Twenty companies donated
500,000 euros each, supported by a number of other endowments.
Although government support was extensive, only 4–5 million
euros of public money was involved. It is difficult to judge the
precise impact of these cumulative activities, but indicators that it
was effective include a tripling of Chinese visitors to the Louvre in
the last year. The ‘saison’ model is not without controversy, with
institutions like the Pompidou Centre particularly vociferous about

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their fears of being instrumentalised by government. The ‘saison’

model is not confined to France – Belgium, Poland and Russia all
have similar programmes.

While it would be impossible to import this model wholesale –

France and the UK have very different approaches to cultural
diplomacy – there is a case for adapting the Saison Culturel model,
appointing ‘creative directors’ to animate, oversee and coordinate
relationships with strategically important countries and their
diasporas in the UK, perhaps involving the type of public festivals
that have become popular in recent years. A nationally coordinated
‘saisons’ model could then be adapted and rolled out at the local level
by local authorities and city governments.

Building cultural literacy

Next generation public diplomacy will be conducted in a world where
individual citizens have more power and opportunity to dictate or
influence the terms of debate than ever before. Public diplomacy
expert Thomas Risse has stressed the growing importance of
understanding and operating at this local or personal level: ‘To
achieve true understanding of nations and peoples, it is imperative
that the two parties engage in both persuading and being open to be
persuaded by the other. Such engagement represents the mode of
dialogic communication, and can probably be most effectively
pursued and accomplished at the local level.’68 Where the rise of
public diplomacy could be described as the shift from few-to-few
communication (traditional diplomacy) to few-to-many, this era
will be characterised by the growth of many-to-many interactions
between individual citizens and groups of citizens, where formal
intervention or mediation will be much more difficult. It is vital that
the UK’s institutions of public and cultural diplomacy respond to this
new context quickly and effectively.
Today, individuals and groups are able to shift public opinion and
mobilise for change. There are many recent examples. The 2006 row

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over the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting the

Prophet Muhammad escalated on internet chatrooms and blogs and
led to the sale of Danish goods plummeting across the Middle East,
accompanied by rioting and attacks on some Nordic embassies in
Syria and Lebanon. Similarly, British Chancellor Gordon Brown
found himself embroiled in a diplomatic incident during his visit to
India early in 2007, caused by the treatment of one of the country’s
most renowned Bollywood actresses by a British reality TV star in the
UK Celebrity Big Brother house. On a more positive note, ‘Brand UK’
looks set to receive a handsome dividend when footballer David
Beckham transfers to play in the US. As the academic and former US
Information Agency (USIA) staffer Richard Arndt put it: ‘Cultural
relations grow naturally and organically, without government
intervention – the transactions of trade and tourism, student flows,
communications, book circulation, migration, media access, inter-
marriage – [there are] millions of daily cross-cultural encounters.’69
We are no longer represented just by our leaders. Knowingly or
not, we are all representatives of our countries and we have the tools
to make an impact. We are all diplomats now. It is therefore critical
that we ensure that our British citizens – especially young people –
have the skills and capacity to cope with this new era of global
cultural connection. While Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of
Civilisations’ theory is contested, the new century has certainly been
marked by a collision of civilisations and it is vital that the UK equips
itself and its citizens to guide themselves through this new terrain.
The UK must ensure that its citizens are culturally literate. This
does not just mean teaching our children about the cultures, histories
and societies of other parts of the world, although this is clearly
important. The pace of cultural interaction and change means that
individuals will need the capacity to make real-time choices and
conclusions necessary for navigating diversity, recognising signals and
getting on with other cultures against an ever-changing backdrop.
Cultural literacy is about creating the capacity to interpret, rather
than simply building up stores of knowledge. It is also underpinned
by a belief that being able to relate to other cultures starts from an

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 Next generation cultural diplomacy

understanding of your own, as recognised in recent recommenda-

tions about the teaching of citizenship.70
One of the British Council’s objectives relates to increasing the
international outlook and understanding of young people in the UK,
and the kind of mutual understanding and appreciation embodied in
the idea of cultural literacy is at the heart of their work. There is scope
to build on this through the work of cultural institutions, both
independently of, and in partnership with, the British Council.
Most cultural institutions already have education and learning
programmes where they use their exhibitions, performances and
programmes as a way of helping young people and other generations
to learn about the rest of the world and themselves. However, the
national need – let alone the international potential – dwarfs their
current capacity. We make recommendations elsewhere about the
need to increase the capacity for cultural institutions to increase
their learning work, especially with diaspora communities, but this
needs to be extended on a larger national scale, too, perhaps
coordinated through the DCMS and DfES.
In New York we came across an interesting programme that could
act as a central component for a strategy for cultural literacy carried
out in partnership with cultural institutions, set out in case study 6.
‘The Art of Observation’ programme at the Frick Collection uses
art substantively to improve observational skills, and heighten
people’s awareness of the fact that we all see things differently based
on our experiences and prejudices. As Amy Herman, the
programme’s creator, told us, it is important that people are given the
opportunity to discuss their prejudices in a safe way and reflect on the
substantive impacts this has on themselves and others. She said: ‘One
of the medical students who did the programme was asked to
describe a painting of an obese black woman. He went round the
houses, outlining everything in the picture apart from the two things
that could have been critical to her medical diagnosis in a hospital –
her weight and skin colour. It really took him aback when we
discussed this and made him question the way in which he conducts
his patient diagnoses. It was critical that he had the space to

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explore these issues and art provides a safe context in which this can
happen.’
The US Embassy in Spain has supported a presentation of the
programme in Madrid, and so impressed were the officials in
attendance that they have asked for similar training to be given to
foreign service officers. The government should explore the
possibility of running a similar scheme through cultural insti-
tutions in the UK.

Case study 6: The Art of Observation at the Frick Collection

The private Frick Collection runs a programme called ‘The Art of
Observation’, which works with a range of professionals – from FBI
and CIA agents to police officers and medical students – using art
to improve their observational skills. The day begins with a
presentation outlining some of the basic principles of effective
observation, which gives the group a chance to discuss the factors
that might influence their ability to see a situation, crime scene or
accident scene objectively, picking up as many cues as possible.
They then carry out observational sessions in groups, each working
on a different painting (it could work equally well with a range of
cultural mediums, such as museum artefacts or dance per-
formances). Each person describes what they see in the ‘scene’
(painting): what is happening, who the people in the painting are,
how they found themselves in that position, and so on. They then
come back together to discuss what they have ‘seen’.

As well as developing the cultural literacy of key professionals and

leaders, such as those involved in the programme at the Frick, it is
also vital that the UK’s cultural literacy initiatives incorporate the
wider range of ‘opinion formers’ created by this latest phase of
globalisation. The British Council has worked hard in recent years to
extend its reach. We came across an interesting example of this in
India. Mocha, a chain of trendy coffee shops in Mumbai, is a regular
haunt for students at top Indian universities like the Indian Institute
of Technology (IIT) Bombay. The British Council put on a series of

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events in Mocha featuring top Indian and British DJs and comedians
with the aim of taking the message of British creativity to a previously
inaccessible audience. By taking these discussions out to the places
these kinds of people frequent, it was hoped that the young people
who attended would start to associate the UK with creativity and
cutting-edge music.
The British Council’s renewed focus on 18–35-year-olds also plays
well into this agenda. Culture, particularly music and film, is a great
way of reaching this group. For example, in Ethiopia, where 44 per
cent of the population is under the age of 15, and only 3 per cent over
the age of 65,71 it is vital to engage the upcoming generation, which
does not form part of the current structures of power. In Addis
Ababa, the British Council is working both with the established
structures of government-backed culture, such as the National
Archive and Library of Ethiopia and the National Theatre, and with
young people through literature, music and film. Activities like the
Mumbai DJ project should be rolled out by other British Council
offices around the world; it should also ensure that it has the right
structures in place to share latest thinking about best practice
about accessing the hard to reach younger generation.

Coming to terms with a pick and mix approach to

national image
One of the natural consequences of the rise of many-to-many public
diplomacy is the challenge of maintaining a relatively coherent
national ‘story’ or image. As the level of exchange increases, it will
become harder to be consistent in terms of message. Our
understanding of our national image will therefore require a more
pragmatic, pick and mix approach.
We are already beginning to see this dilemma play out. On the one
hand, the UK has fought hard to shake off outmoded images of Olde
Englishness as economic and social changes have taken hold. On the
other, there is value to be gained from some of these stereotypes.
Many Chinese families are keen to send their children to be educated
in the UK because of their assumptions about standards and a

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reverence for the country’s traditions and past. Public schools and
universities have been quick to realise the potential: Dulwich College
opened a branch in China in Shanghai, which was inaugurated by
Tony Blair in July 2003, and Harrow soon followed suit. A further
branch of Dulwich College will open in Suzhou in 2007 and a recent
Beijing imitation has styled itself ‘Eton’.72
Multiple national identities – the thatched cottage sitting alongside
Tate Modern – should not be a cause for alarm: ‘If we are living in the
shadow of an older identity, it is not because this identity is somehow
more authentic than any other. It is rather because the original
invention of Britishness was so successful . . . that it has proven
extraordinarily difficult to update it.’73 Ensuring that the full range of
cultural actors are involved in delivering the UK’s public and cultural
diplomacy is one way of ensuring that the richness of the UK’s
national character is fully on display.
This chapter has argued that public diplomacy is undergoing a
period of intense change as new technologies, global communications
and the rise of immigration and travel take hold. The UK public
diplomacy machine must respond to this wholesale, rather than adopt
small-scale and piecemeal changes. We are witnessing the emergence
of a next generation of public diplomacy and the scale of our response
must be proportionate to the scale of change. We make a number of
recommendations relating to the need to embrace new technologies,
realise the potential offered by diaspora communities, and embark on
a new national strategy of cultural literacy to ensure British citizens
are equipped for the challenge of increased global cultural exchange.
One of the key messages is that old distinctions between ‘home’ and
‘abroad’ are outmoded and government and institutional structures
and working arrangements need to reflect this. One of the key
challenges will be for the DCMS in realising its ambition to be the
engine house for a new international cultural policy. If it can effectively
broker relations between cultural activities and communities in the
UK, the activities of cultural institutions overseas and the work of the
FCO and our diplomatic missions overseas, this will represent
important progress in eradicating the dangers of silo working.

80 Demos
5. Conclusions and
recommendations

This report has argued that culture is a key component of UK public

diplomacy. The UK has historical advantages: its collections and
performing companies are world class, we have highly skilled and
respected cultural professionals, we are home to world-class artists,
our culture and heritage act as magnets for tourism and business, our
creative industries are strong and we have a wealth of relationships
with traditional and emerging powers alike, not least through the
British Council’s presence around the globe. And from 2008 onwards
the eyes of the world will be focused on London as it begins its
Olympiad ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games.
While the UK currently has a cultural competitive advantage, we
must not rest on our laurels. We are investing less than the US and
our European neighbours in our cultural institutions, there are few
formal mechanisms for engaging these organisations and other
cultural leaders in the policy-making process, and while there are
many examples of good practice, our work also highlights missed
opportunities. Some of our competitors, on the other hand, are
playing a much more strategic game. Particularly important to note is
the emphasis that emerging powers like China and India are placing
on the role of culture in international relations. If the twenty-first
century really is going to belong to these countries, then we need to
make sure that we are placing sufficient emphasis on culture, too.
An ambitious programme of change is needed, and this report has

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Cultural Diplomacy

recommendations for the UK government, British Council and the

main cultural institutions. These are divided into five broad areas:
building effective governance systems, developing political leadership,
using the Olympics as a focus for partnership working, cultural
literacy, and responding to the challenges and opportunities posed by
new technologies.

Building effective governance systems

We will not realise the potential of culture in international relations
by chance. If we are serious about making the most of the UK’s
cultural competitive argument, we need a sound system of
governance to oversee this work and create more partnership working
arrangements between the government, British Council and the
cultural institutions. This report recommends that:

cultural institutions and the DCMS should be represented

on a newly formed Cultural Diplomacy working group,
run by the Public Diplomacy Group at the FCO

the Cultural Diplomacy working group would have a
number of responsibilities, but specifically it would:

agree priorities for UK cultural diplomacy

regularly review relevant indicators to assess the state
of the UK’s cultural competitive position

assess where official government intervention or
action might be helpful, such as government-to-
government MoUs.

The UK must find ways to incentivise our cultural institutions to

conduct work that contributes towards the UK’s international
priorities. There are a number of ways it could do this:

Those cultural institutions that have not already done so

should create international strategies, whose partial
function would be to show where their international work
matches the UK’s international priorities. Their creation

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 Conclusions and recommendations

and sharing of the plans – through the Cultural

Diplomacy working group – would also help to develop a
better understanding within government of what the
cultural sector is doing, and what it has to offer.

The government should create a one-stop-shop assistance
unit for British cultural institutions wishing to work
outside the UK. Run by the British Council, this would
provide information, assistance, partnering and so forth
to help lower the barriers to entry.

A modest fund should be created to support training
and development in the UK of overseas cultural
professionals.

There should also be a small fund to support first-time
collaboration by UK cultural institutions in the priority
countries and opportunities to collaborate that their
current funding structures may restrict.

The British Council should explore opportunities to
promote more long-term collaboration between UK
cultural institutions and priority countries.

The government should trial a new visa system that would
seek to make cultural exchange easier.

The FCO should explore the possibility of funding
cultural delegations of leading cultural figures to the
BRIC countries to build up contacts and influence and to
act as cultural ambassadors for the UK.

DCMS should consider investing in creative directors to
nurture cultural relationships with priority countries.

Developing political leadership

Structure alone will not be enough: to build momentum, the UK
needs clear political leadership highlighting the value of culture in
international relations. For example:

Ministers and their government departments must look

for more opportunities to engage leading cultural

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Cultural Diplomacy

professionals in the policy-making process through their

involvement in policy teams and commissions.

Government should ensure that the UK’s cultural
standing is maintained by continuing to invest in our
asset base across a wide field (from collections, to the
capacity to keep producing world-class performers) and
by continuing to invest in the means through which those
assets are best exploited and cared for (from buildings to
technology and beyond).

Government should invest in a range of resources
appropriate to context. This report has highlighted that
different approaches are needed in different places.
Different government departments, in partnership with
cultural institutions, need to respond appropriately. For
example, the primary need in Africa is for money and
capacity-building, while the primary need in China is for
political, diplomatic and on-the-ground coordination.
This means different partnerships should come together,
underpinned by different types of resources.

Using the Olympics as a focus for partnership working

Inevitably, implementing the kind of change we are proposing will
involve a lot of work. The forthcoming Olympiad offers a sustained
period in the run-up to 2012 for focusing the national mind around
the importance of culture to our place in the world. The UK must
seize this opportunity and in the process assert our international
standing. We must:

ensure that the FCO’s public diplomacy strategy is joined

up with DCMS and LOCOG plans for the Cultural
Olympiad. By doing this, cultural diplomacy can be made
a central theme in the 2012 public diplomacy strategy,
both at home and abroad

create a team of cultural ambassadors for the Olympic
Games

84 Demos
 Conclusions and recommendations

utilise the opportunity posed by the 2008 Games to

improve UK–China relations. In order to do this, one or
more cultural institutions could second staff to work
alongside embassy officials in Beijing on the UK’s public
diplomacy strategy for the Games. These people could
then return to London following the Games to feed in
ideas and thinking for 2012.

Cultural literacy
The growth of new technologies, global communications, travel,
migration and new democratic expectations of citizens means that we
are all diplomats now. This is especially true for a country like the
UK, which has so many external links. This can be a challenge as well
as an opportunity, and we need to ensure that we are well equipped to
deal with this new reality. We recommend that:

the government should conduct a root and branch review

of the way in which we school our young people to ensure
they have the skills and capacity to cope with this new era
of global cultural connection

the British Council continues to develop projects that
reach 18–35-year-olds in the UK and abroad, especially
those who are hard to reach

the government and cultural institutions, via the Cultural
Diplomacy working group, should explore the possibility
of replicating the Art of Observation initiative, and
develop other cultural literacy initiatives

the FCO and DCMS should work in partnership with
the DCLG to create a comprehensive strategy for
engagement with minority and diaspora communities
through culture

the DCMS should explore the possibility of coordinating
more public and participatory events to highlight the
contribution of diaspora and minority communities to
the UK

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Cultural Diplomacy

the FCO should ensure that all diplomats being sent to

priority countries, especially the BRIC countries, are
properly schooled in the culture of their new
environments; this should be done on a programmatic
rather than an ad hoc basis.

Responding to the challenges and opportunities posed

by new technologies
For many years, there has been a growing recognition of the impact of
new technologies, but our institutions have been slow to get to grips
with them. Too often, technologies are tacked on to old working
practices, rather than being the basis for new ones. If the UK is to stay
ahead of the pack on cultural diplomacy, this must be addressed as a
matter of urgent priority. There are number of practical steps we
could take:

The FCO and British Council must invest in training

programmes for all staff in the latest technological trends
and their application to policy-making.

The government should explore options for supporting
the development of the online aspect of the work of
cultural institutions. Where funding is allocated,
preference should be given to initiatives that focus on
priority countries.

British Council offices should run their websites using
social software that allows partners and other cultural
organisations to input information about their work in-
country. This will help to make the British Council the
point of reference, coordination and match-making in
each country it works in.

In their emerging online strategy, the Olympic organising
bodies should ensure that there is significant cultural
content, exchange and user participation, reflecting the
leadership of the UK in this field.

86 Demos
Appendix: Snapshots of
cultural diplomacy
China, Ethiopia, France, India, Norway
and the US

China
Like France, culture and politics are closely linked. The Chinese
government is conscious of the appeal that ancient and imperial
culture has. It is also aware of the appeal of modern, urban and
youthful Chinese culture. At the same time, however, it is wary of
many of the attitudes and technologies that lie behind this. Websites,
blogs and other new platforms enable communication and the
expression of opinion that are increasingly difficult to control and
monitor and the government has recently begun to crack down on
the use of the internet in China.
Culture is a particularly useful tool for China in developing its
international relations as it provides an alternative focus for
partnerships from the more contentious issues, such as human rights,
democracy and the environment. The dynamism of its contemporary
culture also fits neatly with the booming interest in China’s economy
and rise overseas. In this narrative, the ancient past is a useful
reminder that China is not so much ‘rising’, as reasserting its status.
The naming of Chinese overseas cultural institutes ‘Confucius
Institutes’ at once reinforces the ancient roots of Chinese culture,
the appeal of that culture overseas and the ‘peaceful’ nature of
China’s resurgence, an image that the country’s leaders are keen to
assert.

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Cultural Diplomacy

Policy home base

Cultural diplomacy is not so much a discrete policy owned by any
given department, as bound up within foreign policy, the
presentation of domestic policy overseas, and internal control. Major
institutions like the Palace Museum are state-run, and their directors
are party members and state officials. The Palace Museum director
has the status of a vice minister of culture, as does the director of the
National Museum of China. The Palace Museum describes itself as
‘the cultural business card of China’.

Funding
It is difficult to get an accurate picture of funds devoted to ‘cultural
diplomacy’, although general cultural funding provides a clue. Where
national museums receive about 80 per cent of their funding from the
state, regional museums get about 40–50 per cent; they have to earn
the rest. Similarly, the Peking Opera, a national symbol, gets 80 per
cent of its funding from the state.

Infrastructure
Chinese embassies overseas are accompanied by a strong network of
cultural attachés, and are increasingly supported by the work of the
newly created Confucius Institutes.

New developments
Conceived in 2004, 100 Confucius Institutes are planned around the
world in the next five years – they represent a definite use of culture
to build knowledge and familiarity with China overseas and are
broadly speaking comparable with the French Alliance Française. The
National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language
(NOCFL), the Hanban, is also selecting, training and providing living
expenses for hundreds of Chinese volunteers to teach Mandarin in 23
different countries: in 2005, there were 10,000 volunteers waiting for
placements.

88 Demos
 Appendix: Snapshots of cultural diplomacy

Ethiopia
Ethiopia has an immensely rich and ancient culture. It is the site of
the discoveries of the earliest human remains, and has many
distinctive cultures, from the Christian north, to the Muslim west to
the tribal south. The country was never colonised (a very brief period
of Italian occupation of parts of the country does not qualify), but
has suffered years of instability and conflict, and parts of the country
have experienced severe drought and famine. Ethiopia struggles to
preserve and maintain its heritage – the National Museum has no
fully trained conservator for example – although there are many areas
of progress, such as new building at the National Museum and the
Ethiopia Flora Project. UK institutions are involved in assisting this
development and in capacity-building, but so are the Americans,
French, Germans, Italians, Japanese and Swedes. In 2007 there is a
unique opportunity for cultural cooperation: it is the Ethiopian millen-
nium. The British Council is an important organisation in Addis
Ababa. Historically its library, opened soon after the end of the Second
World War, has been a vital resource for generations of Ethiopians.
With a very young, and large, population, some of the world’s most
significant cultural and scientific sites and artefacts, poor infrastructure
and lack of resources, Ethiopia presents particular challenges and
opportunities in terms of cultural development and relations.

France
Culture and politics are perceived as closely linked, although funding
for culture in France is becoming more distributed (eg the Louvre has
increased fundraising staff from five to 25 in the past five years). This
still leaves high levels of central funding and coordination of cultural
institutions, which provide strategic opportunities for collaborative
cultural ‘seasons’. These are highly successful, but not uncontroversial,
with some cultural institutions voicing concerns about instru-
mentalisation by political actors. The prospective opening of a Louvre
museum in Abu Dhabi is one such area of contention. Supporting
francophonie is still a central strand of cultural diplomacy policy,

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Cultural Diplomacy

although it is often seen by cultural institutions as a kind of French

Commonwealth – a global region of interest within which funding
for cultural activities is particularly easy to access.

Policy home base

Cultural diplomacy policy is jointly owned by the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and the Ministry of Culture and Communication (Directorate
of International Affairs).

Funding
It is difficult to get an accurate picture of funds devoted to ‘cultural
diplomacy’, although the Directorate for International Cooperation
and Development within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had a budget
of 2.2 billion euros in 2005. Four-fifths of this is designated as public
aid for development. A considerable amount of cultural diplomacy
resources are dedicated to cultural capacity-building in the
developing world.

Infrastructure

154 services for cooperation and cultural activities in
embassies

436 cultural institutes abroad (283 are Alliances Française
language centres)

Radio France Intérnationale (RFI) boasts 40 million
listeners.

New developments
In 2006 ‘Cultures France’ was created – described by Culture Minister
Douste-Blazy as a ‘British Council à la française’. This will group
together a number of national cultural societies and activities.

India
There is increasing awareness of the role of culture in India’s rise as a
global power, as referenced by PM Manmohan Singh’s comments
elsewhere in this report.

90 Demos
 Appendix: Snapshots of cultural diplomacy

The major cultural institutions are heavily government controlled,

and there is also a specific diplomatic body dedicated to culture – the
Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). Critics suggest that the
ICCR prioritises a very traditional representation of Indian culture
and cultural activities are carefully vetted in an ‘empanelment process’
before any support is given. Formal cultural diplomacy is just one
aspect contributing to India’s rapidly changing profile overseas,
although the ICCR currently receives more invitations to feature in
cultural programmes than it can deal with. Bollywood, the name
given to India’s film industry, which spreads far wider than Mumbai
and Hindi language films, outsells Hollywood annually by over a
billion tickets. But it is not just Bollywood that is reinventing our
understanding of India – Indian contemporary art is in demand in
the global market as never before. Indian fashion has also ‘taken
flight’ according to a recent Observer special issue (70 international
buyers were part of India fashion week in October 2006).74

Policy home base

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations in Delhi is funded by the
Ministry of External Affairs. City governments such as Delhi have also
developed international profiles.

Funding
ICCR’s approved budget estimates for the year 2004/05 are 5590 lakhs
(hundred thousand) Rupees.

Infrastructure
Eighteen ICCR cultural centres abroad, including the Nehru Centre
in London, with several more planned, including Washington in the
US.

Norway
In recent years, Norway has pursued a more integrated policy of
cultural diplomacy. Many of the major organisations involved,
including Visit Norway, Innovation Norway and NORAD (the

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Cultural Diplomacy

development agency), have consistent typefaces, imagery, and so

forth. A glance at www.norway.org.uk/ shows how highly focused and
strategic the Norwegian approach is. The distillation of a series of
messages about Norway – embodying notions of a clean environ-
ment, wilderness, brave explorers like Nansen and hi-tech modern
design – combines to enable Norway to punch above its weight in the
international arena. Norway has played a notable role as a peace
broker and negotiator and has a reputation as a generous aid donor.
The country has decided on a limited number of important
relationships for its development programme, and sees helping their
cultural infrastructure as a major part of building civil society.
Norway’s relatively recent emergence as a nation – it is only 100 years
old – gives it special insights into the infrastructure of national
cultural institutions that a new nation might wish to establish.

Policy home base

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) is the main player in
coordinating cultural diplomacy efforts, and has set three strategic
priorities for Norway’s embassies: peace and development, natural
resources, and ‘a modern nation’. Responsibility for cultural
relationships in the south is being transferred from the development
agency NORAD to the MFA.

Infrastructure
Cultural institutional autonomy is formally maintained and the MFA
recognises that policy must go with the grain of cultural aims and
practices, but, as they say, ‘everyone knows the messages’. The clarity
of policy is resented in some quarters as counterproductive. One
interviewee said that the relationship is the wrong way around: ‘Art is
way ahead of politics in re-defining global relationships, identities
and collaborations.’ The national arts council is Kuturrad, established
in 1965 along the lines of the UK model, and there is also an
independent national theatre and national gallery.

92 Demos
 Appendix: Snapshots of cultural diplomacy

New developments
Norway uses its distinctive cultural icons in pursuit of foreign policy.
For example, ‘Ibsen Year’ in 2006 involved 8059 separate events across
83 countries from all continents and was constructed around the
playwright’s themes of corruption, the contemporary and gender
equality (which is known in China as ‘Norwegianism’). Culture in
Norway faces the same issues of measurability as in other countries,
although, as the MFA said, ‘development issues are long term and
unmeasurable’.

The US
The relation between culture and politics in the US is tense.
Historically, they have been kept very separate, hence the pre-
eminence of private sponsorship for culture and the separation of
roles between New York and Washington, where the former is the
cultural capital and the latter is the centre of US politics. Culture has
come to the fore of international relations in isolated bursts: during
the Cold War, the freedom of US culture, embodied in Abstract
Expressionism and Jazz, was used to promote American values and
undermine those of the USSR. Now, cultural diplomacy has fallen out
of use. However, the appeal of US popular culture (from Coca-Cola
to Hollywood and Levis) is one of the most potent, but uncontrolled,
forces in the cultural world today.

Policy home base

Cultural diplomacy used to be overseen by the USIA but this
organisation was disbanded by the Clinton administration in the
1990s. Its responsibilities now sit under the US Department of State.
The Smithsonian Institution plays an international role as a cultural
hub: although nominally representative of the US (it is functionally
and legally a body of the federal government, with eight of its 17
regents being state officials), its component institutions operate with
the same freedom as other major institutions, like the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York.

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Cultural Diplomacy

Funding
There is little tradition of state funding of culture in the US. Culture
is not seen as falling within the federal remit and so federal
encroachment attendant to funding can be seen with scepticism.
Much initiative on the part of institutions is therefore funded by
foundations and individual donations, with generous tax
arrangements available to incentivise donation.

Infrastructure

Major US embassies have cultural attachés.

The State Department has assumed some of the
responsibilities of the former USIA.

The Voice of America reaches an estimated 115 million
listeners per week and, in financial year 2006, had a
budget of $166 million. It broadcasts in 44 languages and
has a clear remit in charter to ‘represent America’.

Individual artists, performers and others act as ‘cultural
ambassadors’, communicating US cultural forms overseas:
Toni Blackman is a ‘hip-hop ambassador’, and ice skater
Michelle Kwan occupies a similar role.

New developments
There is growing awareness that the appeal of US brands is waning.
With the growth of tensions in the Middle East, the State Department
and others are looking to the success of cultural diplomacy during the
Cold War as a precedent, and there is a clear sense that any state-
funded cultural diplomacy must be strictly in the national interest.
The emphasis is very much on promoting immediate US interests
overseas – President Bush appointed his personal friend and former
Madison Avenue advertising executive, Karen Hughes, as his Under
Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

94 Demos
Notes

1 According to J Nye, see www.foreignaffairs.org/20040501facomment83303/

joseph-s-nye-jr/the-decline-of-america-s-soft-power.html (accessed 6 Feb
2007).
2 Laqueur, ‘Save public diplomacy’.
3 FCO, Active Diplomacy for a Changing World.
4 See www.arts.org.uk/aboutus/ambition.php (accessed 2 Feb 2007).
5 DCMS, International Strategy Document.
6 www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/Arts/international_arts_policy/china_uk.htm
(accessed 6 Feb 2007).
7 Foister, Holbein in England.
8 From an interview with a director of the Palace Museum conducted by a
Demos researcher in Beijing, 17 Oct 2006.
9 Arndt, The First Resort of Kings.
10 R Menon, quoted in Finn, ‘The case for cultural diplomacy’.
11 Interview with Ed Mortimer and Demos researchers, 12 Jul 2006.
12 From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edn, viewed
at Dictionary.com website (29 Sep 2006), see http://dictionary.reference.com/
browse/diplomacy (accessed 7 Feb 2007).
13 Nye, Soft Power.
14 Leonard, Public Diplomacy.
15 For a summary and links to viewing the Carter Review, see www.fco.gov.uk/
servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/
ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029395249 (accessed 7 Feb 2007).
16 Leonard, ‘Diplomacy by other means’.
17 Interview with Paul de Quincey at British Council Paris, 11 Jul 2006.
18 Wang, ‘Localising public diplomacy’.
19 Wolf and Rosen, ‘Public diplomacy’.
20 Dyson, ‘Reinventing the nation’.
21 See www.fco.gov.uk/Files/kfile/Aichi%20Expo%20Report_1.pdf (accessed 7
Feb 2007).

Demos 95
Cultural Diplomacy

22 From FCO, Active Diplomacy for a Changing World: (1) making the world safer
from global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction; (2) reducing the harm
to the UK from international crime, including drug trafficking, people
smuggling and money laundering; (3) preventing and resolving conflict
through a strong international system; (4) building an effective and globally
competitive EU in a secure neighbourhood; (5) supporting the UK economy
and business through an open and expanding global economy, science and
innovation, and secure energy supplies; (6) achieving climate security by
promoting a faster transition to a sustainable, low-carbon global economy; (7)
promoting sustainable development and poverty reduction underpinned by
human rights, democracy, good governance and protection of the
environment; (8) managing migration and combating illegal immigration; (9)
delivering high-quality support for British nationals abroad, in normal times
and in crises; and (10) ensuring the security and good governance of the UK’s
Overseas Territories.
23 See www.en.articlesgratuits.com/gastro-diplomacy-101-id411.php (accessed 29
Jan 2007).
24 See http://english.people.com.cn/english/200006/26/eng20000626_43930.html
(accessed 6 Feb 2007).
25 Dickie, ‘Starbucks faces Forbidden City ban’.
26 See www.youtube.com/t/about (accessed 7 Feb 2007).
27 See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6230247.stm (accessed 8 Feb
2007).
28 See www.yele.org/vision.html (accessed 8 Feb 2007).
29 See ‘China rockin’ to Supergirl’, Seattle Times, 30 Aug 2005, see
www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-08/30/content_473432.htm
(accessed 15 Jan 2007).
30 See www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/
cmselect/cmcumeds/414/41405.htm (accessed 7 Feb 2007).
31 NMDC, Values and Vision.
32 See Visit Britain Press Centre, available at
www.visitbritain.com/corporate/presscentre/presscentrebritain/pressreleasesov
erseasmrkt/jan-mar2006/jan06ips.aspx (accessed 7 Feb 2007).
33 The number of visitors to Alnwick’s Tourist Office rose from 65,000 in 2002 to
101,000 in 2003. See www.alnwick.gov.uk/an/webconnect.exe/AO2/View/
?Version=2986&Site=756&PF=NULL&SiteGroup= (accessed 7 Feb 2007).
34 See Visit Britain Press Centre.
35 The Art Newspaper 167 (Mar 2006).
36 See http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/artandlife/1404AP_Art_Louvre.html
(accessed 7 Feb 2007).
37 According to Saint Chamas, adviser to the president of the Louvre, the number
of Chinese visitors had tripled in the 12 months prior to our interview at the
Louvre Museum, Paris, 10 Jul 2006.
38 See www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/Creative_industries/ (accessed 7 Feb
2007).

96 Demos
 Notes

39 DCMS, International Strategy Document.

40 Holden and Jones, Knowledge and Inspiration.
41 V Westwood, speech at the launch of the Wallace Collection exhibition,
Boucher: Seductive Visions, 29 Sep 2004.
42 NMDC, International Dimensions.
43 Wilsdon and Keeley, China.
44 See www.artfund.org/policyandcampaigns/ (accessed 28 Jan 2007).
45 Quoted in Bailey, ‘The Metropolitan has 70 times the purchasing power of the
British Museum’.
46 See www.rapidimmigration.com/usa/1_eng_info_q1culture.html (accessed 7
Feb 2007).
47 President’s Foreword, in Rawski and Rawson (eds), China.
48 Rawski and Rawson (eds), China.
49 Aspden, ‘Cultural exchange’.
50 Logan, ‘The revolution will not be satirised’.
51 Portal and McKillop (eds), North Korean Culture and Society.
52 See www.discoverislamicart.org (accessed 7 Feb 2007).
53 Mohan, ‘India and the balance of power’.
54 PM Manmohan Singh, speech at the Hindustan Times India Leadership
Summit, New Delhi, Nov 2006.
55 French, ‘China witnesses a ’70s flashback’.
56 See www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/Arts/international_arts_policy/
china_uk.htm (accessed 7 Feb 2007).
57 See http://ctc.britishcouncil.org.cn/en/info/index.jsp (accessed 5 Feb 2007).
58 See www.britishcouncil.org/china-arts-artistlinks-whatis.htm (accessed 5 Feb
2007).
59 P Gerstenblith, quoted in Huffstutter and Naji, ‘Antiquities stuck in legal limbo’.
60 Ibid.
61 Friedman, The World is Flat.
62 Ibid.
63 See, for example, www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/?lid=22114 (accessed 7 Feb
2007).
64 See http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1925591,00.html (accessed 7
Feb 2007).
65 See www.plantcultures.org.uk (accessed 7 Feb 2007).
66 Elworthy and Rifkind, Hearts and Minds.
67 Akbar, Shamiana.
68 T Risse, 2000, quoted in Wang, ‘Localising public diplomacy’.
69 Arndt, The First Resort of Kings.
70 See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6294643.stm (accessed 7 Feb 2007).
71 See www.prb.org/pdf06/06WorldDataSheet.pdf (accessed 7 Feb 2007).
72 Kynge, China Shakes the World.
73 Leonard, BritainTM.
74 ‘New India’, Observer Magazine, 26 Nov 2006.

Demos 97
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S Foister, Holbein in England, exhibition catalogue (London: Tate Publications, 2006).

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Cultural Diplomacy

Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Active Diplomacy for a Changing World: The
UK’s international priorities (London: FCO Publications, 2006).
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T Friedman, The World is Flat: The globalised world in the twenty-first century
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J Garreau, ‘America, minus a human factor’, Washington Post, 26 Apr 2006.
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of Migrations (Oxford: Blackwells, 2003).
J Gittings, The Changing Face of China: From Mao to market (Oxford: Oxford
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S Gregory, ‘Anti-US backlash’, Time, 6 Dec 2004, viewed online at
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2007).
J Holden and S Jones, Knowledge and Inspiration: The democratic face of culture
(London: Demos/Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2006).
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2006.
S Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).
W Hutton, The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st century (London:
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J Jiang, ‘Found in translation’, Business Weekly, China Daily, 16 Oct 2006.
J Joffe, ‘Who’s afraid of Mr Big?’ The National Interest, Summer 2001.
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for professionalism (London: Demos, 2006).
S Jones and P Bradwell, As You Like It (London: Demos, 2007).
N Klein, No Logo (London: Flamingo, 2001).
C Knight, ‘Portrait of a cultural battle’, Los Angeles Times, 4 Apr 2006.
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(Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press,
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DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1998).
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100 Demos
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M Leonard, BritainTM (London: Demos, 1997).

M Leonard, ‘Diplomacy by other means’, Foreign Policy, Sep/Oct 2002.
M Leonard, Going Public: Diplomacy for the information society (London: Foreign
Policy Centre, 2000).
M Leonard, Public Diplomacy (London: Foreign Policy Centre, 2002).
M Leonard and A Small, British Public Diplomacy in the ‘Age of Schisms’ (London:
Foreign Policy Centre, 2005).
M Leonard and A Small, Norwegian Public Diplomacy (London: Foreign Policy
Centre, 2003).
J Littler and R Naidoo (eds), The Politics of Heritage: The legacies of race (London:
Routledge, 2005).
B Logan, ‘The revolution will not be satirised’, Guardian, G2, 5 Feb 2007.
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(London: Office of National Statistics, 2006).
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Migrations (Oxford: Blackwells, 2003).
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Demos 101
Cultural Diplomacy

D Papademetriou, ‘Managing rapid and deep change in the newest age of migration’,
in S Spenser (ed), The Politics of Migrations (Oxford: Blackwells, 2003).
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Pew Global Attitudes Survey (Washington, DC: Pew Research Centre, Jun 2006).
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J Portal and B McKillop (eds), North Korean Culture and Society, British Museum
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E Rawski and J Rawson (eds), China: The three emperors, 1662–1795, exhibition
catalogue (London: Royal Academy, 2005).
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A strategic plan for action (London: Re:Source, 2001).
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in English Museums, Archives and Libraries (London: Re:Source, 2003).
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Funding for Museums, Archives and Libraries (London: Re:Source, 2003).
Re:Source: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, Mapping the
Infrastructure of the Museums, Archives and Libraries Sector in Slovenia (London:
Re:Source, 2003).
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viewed online at www.nytimes.com/2005/arts/27essa.html (accessed 15 Jan 2007).
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J Wilsdon and J Keeley, China: The next science superpower? (London: Demos, 2007).
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102 Demos
Organisations
interviewed

China
Ai Wei Wei, Artist
The Beijing Botanical Garden
The British Council, China
The British Embassy, Beijing
The Central Party School of CPC, Institute of International Strategic
Studies
The China Institute of International Studies
The China Reform Forum
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
CSM Media Research
The Economist, China
The Long March Gallery, Beijing
mad Architects, Beijing
Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Beijing
The Palace Museum, Beijing
Platform China, Beijing
Renmin University of China, School of International Studies, Beijing
Today Art Museum, Beijing
22Film, Beijing
The Ullens Centre for the Arts, Beijing
Vision Magazine, Beijing

Demos 103
Cultural Diplomacy

Ethiopia
British Council, Addis Ababa
British Embassy, Ethiopia
The Ethiopian Heritage Trust
The Ministry of Culture
The Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture
The National Library and Archives of Ethiopia
The National Museum of Ethiopia
Professor Richard Pankhurst
The University of Addis Ababa, Faculty of Science, Ethiopia Flora
Project
The University of Addis Ababa, Institute of Ethiopian Studies
Zoma Contemporary Arts Centre

France
American Friends of Versailles
British Council, Paris
Institut du Monde Arabe
Institut Français, London
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Musée du Louvre
Musée du Quai Branly

India
A Advertising (Delhi)
Mr Roysten Abel, Theatre Director (Delhi)
Anokhi, Jaipur Virasat Foundation (Delhi)
Mrs Sushma Bahl (Delhi)
Rita Kapur Chisti (Academic and Textiles Activist) (Delhi)
The Asian Heritage Foundation (Delhi)
British Council, Delhi (Delhi)
British Council, West India (Mumbai)
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sagrahalaya (Mumbai)
Counselage (Delhi)

104 Demos
 Organisations interviewed

Cymroza Art Gallery (Mumbai)

DASTKAR, Society for Crafts and Craftspeople (Delhi)
Mr Vikas Dilawari (Conservation Architect) (Mumbai)
DNA Academy (Mumbai)
Entertainment Media Services PVT Ltd (Delhi)
The Financial Times South Asia Bureau (Mumbai)
The Hindustan Times (Mumbai)
The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (Delhi)
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (Delhi)
INTACH (Delhi)
International Herald Tribune, South Asia correspondent
(Mumbai)
Isharia Puppet Theatre Trust (Delhi)
Sumant Jayakrishnan (Freelance art director and designer) (Delhi)
Khoj International Artists Association (Delhi)
Lotus Architecture and Design (Delhi)
Maya Entertainment (Mumbai)
Mukta Arts Ltd (Mumbai)
National Gallery for Modern Art (Delhi)
Nature Morte Gallery (Delhi)
Sanskriti Foundation (Delhi)
The School of Planning and Architecture, Urban Design Department
(Delhi)
Seher, Delhi Government arts adviser (Delhi)
Sony Music, India (Mumbai)
State Government of Maharashtra, Department of Culture
(Mumbai)
Task Force on Cultural and Creative Industries (Delhi)
Teamwork Films (Delhi)
The Times of India (Delhi)
Ms Bandana Tiwari, Freelance fashion journalist (Mumbai)
TVB School of Habitat Studies (Delhi)
Whistling Woods International Film School (Mumbai)
Zee Cafe, Zee Trendz, Zee Telefilms Ltd (Mumbai)

Demos 105
Cultural Diplomacy

Norway
ABM Utvikling (Norwegian Archive, Library and Museum
Authority)
The British Council, Oslo
Kulturrad (Norwegian Arts Council)
The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design
Norwegian Literature Abroad (NORLA)
Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Culture Department

UK
Asia House
BBC Worldwide
The British Council
The British Library
The British Museum
The Cultural Section of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of
China
Department of Culture, Media and Sport
The International Council of Museums (ICOM)
The London Confucius Institute, School of Oriental and African
Studies
The Museum of London
The Natural History Museum
The Royal Academy of Arts
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
The Royal Opera House
The Runnymede Trust
UK Trade and Investment
The Victoria & Albert Museum

US
The Academy for Educational Development, Washington, DC
The Art Institute of Chicago
BBC, Washington, DC

106 Demos
 Organisations interviewed

The British Consulate, Chicago

The British Council, Washington, DC
The British Embassy, Washington, DC
Brookings Institute, Saban Center, Washington, DC
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington,
DC
The Carnegie Hall, New York
The Cato Institute, Washington, DC
Control Risks, Washington, DC
The Field Museum, Chicago
The Frick Collection, New York
Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service, Public Policy
Institute
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
The International Peace Academy
The Library of Congress, Washington, DC
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA)
The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago
The National Arts Journalism Program, New York
The National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, DC
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
The New America Foundation, Washington, DC
The Pew Global Attitudes Project, Washington, DC
The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
The Program on International Policy Attitudes
The RAND Corporation, Washington, DC
The Smithsonian Institution, Center for Folklife and Cultural
Heritage, Washington, DC
The Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History,
Washington, DC
The Smithsonian Institution, National Portrait Gallery, Washington,
DC
The Smithsonian Institution, Office of International Relations,
Washington, DC

Demos 107
Cultural Diplomacy

The United Nations (UN), New York

The United Nations Alliance of Civilisations, New York
University of Colorado at Denver, School of Public Affairs
The US Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural
Affairs
The US Institute of Peace, Washington, DC

108 Demos
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compensation.The exchange of the Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-
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to the best of Licensor’s knowledge after reasonable inquiry:
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